The unconscious man was powerfully built, with face tanned brown above a yellow beard, from exposure to sun and wind. As Jack had said, he did not look like a tramp. Suddenly the boy noticed lying near him an object which had evidently fallen from the man's pocket when he was struck and flung through the air by the auto.
It was a small cylinder, apparently made of lead, and about three inches long. Jack picked it up, and for the time being did not attempt to examine it but thrust it into his pocket for safe keeping. Little did either of the boys think how much that little cylinder was to mean to them, and how it was to influence some of the most important adventures of their lives.
Making the man as comfortable as they could, by rolling up their coats and placing them under his head, the boys hurried back to the Wondership. When they arrived there they saw that a feature of the radio 'phone, which has not yet been mentioned, was working in urgent appeal. This was a tiny red electric light attached to the top of the case containing the sensitive parts of the apparatus.
By an ingenious device, worked as a call signal from the transmitting station, the electric waves converted a lighting circuit for this purpose.
It was winking and twinkling, and Jack knew that his father was trying to call them.
He sent out some flashes by starting the dynamo going and pressing a key devised for the purpose. This, he knew, would cause a similar light attached to his father's apparatus to flash a reply. This done he waited a second and then adjusted the receivers to his ears.
"What's the matter?" came his father's voice.
Jack gave him a rapid account of the accident, not stopping just then to say anything about the incident of the farmer and his barn.
"What are you going to do about it?" asked his father.
"He appears to be seriously hurt," said Jack. "I was thinking of rushing him to the hospital at Nestorville."