"Well, if I can make it do three hundred miles I'll be satisfied, but I'm going to try for four hundred."
"What will you do when your battery runs out?"
"Recharge it."
"Suppose you're not near a charging station?"
"Well, Dad, of course those are some of the details I've got to work out. I'm planning a register gauge now, that will give warning about fifty miles before the battery is run down. That will leave me a margin to work on. And I'm going to have it fixed so I can take current from any trolley line, as well as from a regular charging station. My battery will be capable of being recharged very quickly, or, in case of need, I can take out the old cells and put in new ones.
"That's a very good idea. Well, I hope you succeed."
A few evenings after this, when Tom was busy in his machine shop, he heard some one enter. He looked up from the gauge of the motor, which he was studying, and, for a moment, he could make out nothing in the dark interior of the shop, for he was working in a brilliant light.
"Who's there?" he called sharply, for, more than once unscrupulous men had endeavored to sneak into the Swift shops to steal ideas of inventions; if not the actual apparatus itself.
"It's me—Ned Newton," was the cheerful reply.
"Oh, hello, Ned! I was wondering what had become of you," responded Tom. "Where have you been lately?"