XVI
ELECTROCUTION AT MILLVILLE
The old mill was infested with rats. My wife laid down to the boys the principle that good housekeepers were never troubled with vermin of any kind. The rats' sole occupation is to search for food. If you don't feed them they will not stay with you. But the boys said that they were glad of a chance to try an experiment on the rats. So one day when I went down to the mill I found them discussing the possibility of killing the rats by electricity. Harold said that he had read that it took much less electricity to kill any animal than to kill a man, and he would like to try, for instance, whether the shock which they had received from a bell would kill a rat.
"Well, who's going to sit by," said Erg, "to close the primary circuit when the rat happens to get himself into the secondary circuit?"
"Make him close it himself by some device," said Ernest.
"They have a regular thoroughfare, a beaten highway, along by the wall, under the mill and up through a hole in the floor of my bedroom," said Dyne.
Fig. 154
