Frank Armstrong, Drop Kicker

by Matthew M. Colton

"I say," said Jimmy, "it would be a great stunt. We could use it as a kind of alarm clock. When I sleep over, the Codfish can rattle a little on it and I'll be awake in a jiffy."

"Thank you," said the Codfish. "I vote against it, if I'm to be the alarming fellow."

"And," continued Frank, "we might run a wire down to Queen's station and get the night operator to send to us for practice."

"Yes, I imagine he'd love to do it," quoth the Codfish. "He seems so much like a generous fellow, particularly when you show him money."

"Well, let's show him money, if he won't do it without it."

David agreed with Frank that it would be a good scheme to have a telegraph line; and the long and the short of it was that the next night a descent was made on Murphy, the night operator at the station who, after much haggling about the price, agreed to run a private wire from the station to Queen's School and equip it with two sets—because only two sets were available. Murphy also agreed that for this sum he would furnish enough "juice" from the station batteries to make a sending current on the wire, and moreover he would "send" for fifteen minutes every night when the boys desired.

The boys went back to Queen's and scraped together enough money between them to pay ten dollars down, and Murphy, as good as his word, commenced stringing the wire the next day. As the line was to be kept a secret, it took a somewhat crooked path, dodging this way and that way to avoid conspicuous places. It cut across the river from the station, was bracketed on a tree, then took half a dozen leaps among the trees across the roof of an old house long unoccupied, and finally climbed the slope to Queen's School, well hidden among the trees.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the work was getting the wire on Honeywell Hall itself so as not to attract the attention of the caretakers, who would undoubtedly have made short work of it. The heavier wire was ended on a bracket on a great elm that swayed over the roof of Honeywell. From this bracket a very fine copper wire was stretched to the room of Jimmy and Lewis, which was fortunately on the rear of the Hall. From there it was an easy matter to bring it across and down a rain spout to the sill of Frank's window. When the whole job was completed, much of it under cover of darkness, so well had it been done that unless you had been looking for such a wire you might have looked over a hundred times and seen nothing unusual.

When the circuit was complete, Murphy attached the instruments and returned to the station. "I go on duty to-night at seven o'clock," he said, "and I'll cut the wire in and see how she works."