The doctor came over to the dark room and stepped in. “I presume they are about fixed by this time,” he said, dipping his hand into the fixing bath and taking out a negative. He held it to the light and examined it critically. “Just a trifle over time, don’t you think, Upton? Still it is an excellent negative, and the composition is admirable. Hello, what’s this?” He had dropped the first one into a tray of running water and had picked up a second which he was turning round and round in his hands as if he hardly knew which was top and which was bottom. “Ha, I have it!” An expression of perplexity passed over his face and his brows puckered. “What’s this, Upton?” he asked. “I didn’t hear anything about any such photo as this.”
Walter stepped behind him and looked at the negative the doctor was holding to the light. At first he could make nothing of it but a tangle of foliage. Then suddenly he saw against this background the figure of a man stooping beneath the burden of the body of a deer across his shoulders. Walter’s mouth gaped foolishly as he studied the negative.
“What does it mean, Upton?” the doctor repeated, a twinkle in his eyes as he saw the boy’s vacant look.
“I don’t know, sir,” replied Walter truthfully enough.
“But the negative is yours, isn’t it?” persisted the doctor.
“Yes, sir. No, sir. That is—why, of course it must be mine,” replied Walter confusedly. “I don’t understand it at all, sir.”
“How many flashlights did you make?”
“Two; the one of the three deer and the one on the run. This——” He paused as it flashed over him for the first time that this was a flashlight negative.
“Yes,” said the doctor with a quizzical smile, “this is one of them. And as it certainly isn’t the one of the three deer it is the one on the run.”
“But—but what does it mean?” asked Hal, looking over the shoulders of the others.