THE DART AROSE ON A SPLENDID ARROW COURSE.
Ben Hardy’s Flying Machine Page [143]

BEN HARDY’S FLYING
MACHINE

Or
Making a Record for Himself

BY

FRANK V. WEBSTER

AUTHOR OF “ONLY A FARM BOY,” “AIRSHIP ANDY,” “TOM
THE TELEPHONE BOY,” “THE YOUNG TREASURE
HUNTER,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

BOOKS FOR BOYS

By FRANK V. WEBSTER

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

ONLY A FARM BOY
TOM, THE TELEPHONE BOY
THE BOY FROM THE RANCH
THE YOUNG TREASURE HUNTER
BOB, THE CASTAWAY
THE YOUNG FIREMEN OF LAKEVILLE
THE NEWSBOY PARTNERS
THE BOY PILOT OF THE LAKES
TWO BOY GOLD MINERS
JACK, THE RUNAWAY
COMRADES OF THE SADDLE
THE BOYS OF BELLWOOD SCHOOL
THE HIGH SCHOOL RIVALS
AIRSHIP ANDY
BOB CHESTER’S GRIT
BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE
DICK, THE BANK BOY
DARRY, THE LIFE SAVER
Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1911, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE

Printed in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE

CHAPTER I

“NOBLY REWARDED!”

“Take care—that engine is going to run wild!”

Those words, yelled out by a brawny mechanic, announced a moment of excitement in the Saxton Automobile Works, the home of the celebrated Estrelle machine.

The big steam engine of the plant had slipped the belt. There was a jar and then a crash. Then the big driving wheel of the engine began speeding like an uncontrollable monster. Clouds of steam covered the boiler room like a snow bank. The machine shop gearing snapped and vibrated, and the building began to shake from end to end.

One big man with a shout of dismay ran for the front of the shop, and disappeared through its doorway into the street. This was Jasper Saxton, the owner of the establishment. His example was followed by several of the clerks in the glass-partitioned office at the front of the building. Most of the twenty odd machinists in the shop, however, stuck to their posts.

“Danger—look out!” shouted old Caleb Dunn, the foreman.

Every man at a lathe immediately slipped the belt of his special machine. Those at the further end of the shop did not attempt this. They dodged and ran away from their posts of duty.

There was a reason for this. One end of the big shaft nearest the engine had dropped. The jar of the engine had either broken a connection of the shaft or it had slipped a bearing. At all events, the shaft had taken a sidelong swing and had struck the floor, reducing a plank to splinters. There it turned, wobbled about and slammed up and down, smashing everything that came in its way.

“Do something, men!” shouted Martin Hardy, head machinist of the auto works.

As he spoke Mr. Hardy started on a run for the rear of the machine shop, but he was anticipated. His son, Ben Hardy, had arrived on the scene just in time to take part in the thrilling event of the moment.

It was after school hours, and Ben always had free run of the plant. His father was an expert in his line and an old and valued employee, and his son, with his cheerful, accommodating ways, was always a welcome visitor with the workmen, with whom he was a general favorite.

Ben was familiar with every turn and corner of the shop. In a flash his eye took in the unusual situation as it presented itself. He guessed out the cause of the commotion intuitively.

“Don’t go, father!” he cried, seizing his father’s arm and detaining him. “I know the way.”

Ben did, indeed, know the way. A sliding iron door separated the engine room from the machine shop. Above it was an open space, and through this the steam was pouring. Ben knew that it was many chances against one that the iron door was caught on the other side. Besides this, the wobbling shaft piece was still threshing about, a formidable barrier, although the power was dying down as the connecting dismantled shafts revolved less rapidly.

In a far corner of the machine shop there was a sashless window frame. Through it Ben had clambered many a time. It was used for ventilation. It opened upon the roof of a small brick oven which was used to bake the sand cores used in the molding flasks.

Ben leaped through the aperture and landed on the roof in a second. Beyond it rolled the iron drum which ground the fine charcoal for the dust bags employed in drying the wet sand in the molding frames. This Ben cleared at a bound.

He heard a timber fall in the machine shop, and there was an ominous quaking of the staunch timbers all over the place as his feet landed on the hard cindered floor of the boiler room.

“Where is Shallock, the engineer, all this time?” murmured Ben, and running alongside of the boiler he discovered that the man was mysteriously missing from his post at a critical moment.

Through the clouds of steam fast escaping from the overheated boiler Ben made out the engineer. He knew Tom Shallock well, and was not astonished at his present condition. He knew the son of the engineer, Dave Shallock, still better. Ben had no reason to feel particularly friendly towards either, but he sought honestly to save the engineer from the loss of his position and disgrace.

Shallock sat huddled back in the big heavy armchair in which he rested between spells of alternate duty to engine and boiler. He was his own fireman, and his chair was directly in front of the furnace door. Ben ran at him and shook him forcibly by the arm, with the urgent words shouted into his ear:

“Wake up, Mr. Shallock, there’s trouble!”

But the engineer simply grunted in an incoherent way, and a half-filled bottle that had slipped from his hand to the floor told the whole miserable story.

Ben darted past the helpless man and ran down two stone steps to the engine pit. It was well that he was a boy who noticed things and usually kept his bearings well in mind, for he had to grope his way. A thrill of gladness ran through his frame as his hand finally rested on the valve wheel. Two turns, and Ben drew back gasping for breath and reeking with perspiration. The whiz of the great driving wheel lessened, the governor slowed down to a stop. Returning to the boiler room, Ben set the escape valve on the boiler and knew that he had saved the day.

Some men came running in from the molding room. One of them went to the iron door and unset its latch and rolled it open, for some one was hammering vigorously on it on the other side. It was Mr. Hardy.

“Rouse him up, quick,” spoke Ben to one of the molders, and with a motion of his foot he kicked the tell-tale liquor flask towards the ash pit.

The man laughed, winked, and with the aid of a comrade dragged the engineer to his feet. By this time Mr. Hardy had reached the spot. Pressing past him, the foreman faced the blinking engineer sternly.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Faugh!” as he caught a whiff of the engineer’s breath—“at the old trick again, eh?”

“Steam overcame me,” stammered Shallock.

The shop foreman turned to Ben.

“Did you do that?” he inquired in his sharp, crisp way, waving his hand towards the engine.

“I shut off the power—yes, sir,” replied Ben.

“What was this man doing?”

Ben hesitated and flushed up. He did not wish to tell on anybody, much less a person who disliked him and would be sure to ascribe any “peaching” to spite.

“You needn’t answer,” suddenly spoke the foreman, his keen eye catching sight of the bottle, and picking it up. “Get out of here, you,” he added disgustedly, giving the engineer a shove towards the door.

“Look here, Mr. Dunn——”

“You get!” reiterated the foreman.

Shallock began to snivel.

“See here, you may be sick yourself some time,” he declared in a maudlin tone.

“Sick!” repeated the foreman contemptuously.

“I’ve run my engine two years——”

“It isn’t your engine any more,” observed the foreman. “One of you men go for Pete Doty,” he continued to the group from the molding room. “He’s out of a job, and he can have this one if he qualifies right. That’s all,” added Dunn, with a peremptory wave of his hand.

The signal was understood promptly by all hands to get back to their respective places. Mr. Hardy moved over to the side of Ben. He placed a hand on his son’s head and his eyes were full of emotion.

“I am proud of you, my son,” he said simply.

“You ain’t the only one,” broke in Dunn, brusquely brushing Mr. Hardy aside and catching Ben’s arm in his iron grip. “You come with me, boy.”

He was a resolute hustling piece of humanity, always doing things forcefully. With a rush he dragged Ben into and through the machine shop.

“Good boy!” spoke a machinist, patting Ben on the shoulder as he passed him.

“You did it grand, lad,” commended a second.

“Three cheers for Ben Hardy!” roared Tim Grogan, a jolly and independent apprentice.

The enthusiastic cheers, given with a will, died away as the foreman and Ben reached the office.

“Where’s Saxton?” demanded Dunn in his bluff off-handed way.

“He went outside the building,” explained the bookkeeper, who had suspended work and looked anxious and flustered. “Say, is the danger over?”

“Oh, maybe a few shingles shaken off the roof. I reckon Saxton went outside to see how many,” retorted the foreman sarcastically. “Here he comes.”

The portly proprietor of the works at that moment came strutting through the front doorway. He was very consequential, now that the peril was past.

“Here Mr. Saxton,” spoke the foreman, “—you know this boy?”

“It’s Hardy’s lad, isn’t it?” replied Jasper Saxton, with a stare at Ben.

“Yes. He’s saved your shop from rattling to pieces, that’s all,” announced the foreman bluntly. “That pet of yours, Tom Shallock, was in liquor and asleep at his post. If Ben here hadn’t got in action there’d have been a long shut-down of the Saxton Automobile Works, I can tell you, and maybe some funerals.”

Saxton looked annoyed and angry at the reference to the engineer, and slightly bored at the determined way in which his foreman kept pushing Ben to the front. All this embarrassed the latter, who tried to wriggle free from the grasp of the foreman.

“Where is Shallock?” asked Mr. Saxton uneasily.

“Fired,” tersely reported the foreman.

“Why—I—that is——” stammered Mr. Saxton.

“You act as if you were afraid of that man, Mr. Saxton,” observed the foreman bluntly. “I’ve sent for Pete Doty. He’ll be here directly. About this boy, now——”

“Yes, yes,” nodded Mr. Saxton hurriedly. “Good boy. First-class father, too. Shake hands. Glad. Thank you.”

“Hold on, Mr. Saxton,” interrupted the foreman, as his employer started to close the incident by entering the office of the works. “What are you going to do for young Hardy?”

“Do—eh. Ah. I see. Come into the office, Hardy.”

Ben obeyed the order. Mr. Saxton looked nettled, and Ben felt dreadfully conscious. The former put his hands in a pocket and drew out a roll of bills. These he promptly transferred to another pocket. He next fished out a dollar, glanced at it, then at Ben, went over to a desk, drew out a money draw and changed the large silver coin.

He pocketed three quarters and handed the other twenty-five cent piece to Ben.

“Oh, no,” dissented Ben, drawing back. “There is no need of that, Mr. Saxton.”

“I insist,” said Mr. Saxton grandly. “You’ve done quite a big thing, Hardy, and you deserve the reward.”

CHAPTER II

JUST IN TIME

“Thank you,” said Ben.

“Don’t mention it,” responded Jasper Saxton.

The manufacturer turned from Ben with a decided expression of relief on his face. He acted like a man who had got off cheaply.

It was in Ben’s mind to ask Mr. Saxton if he “was to keep all of the twenty-five cents,” but sarcasm was not Ben’s forte. He was too ingenious to cherish resentment against either friend or enemy. Ben simply pocketed the coin. He concealed a smile of comicality. The situation, displaying Jasper Saxton’s usual meanness, rather tickled him.

He was about to turn and leave the office when an extraordinary movement on the part of Saxton enchained his attention. The latter with something between a growl and a yell had described an active jump. He landed up against a parcel bench on which lay a variety of small machine parts, bagged and ready for shipment.

“What! hasn’t that gone yet?” he shouted, his hand closing over a small steel section of some machine weighing about ten pounds.

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed the bookkeeper, “I was just going to wrap that up and send it when the shop began to shake. I’ll attend to it immediately, sir.”

“Immediately!” howled Saxton, as the bookkeeper fumbled over twine and wrapping paper—“why, it’s special. Do you understand that? The man it is for is expecting it at the depot. He is to leave on the five o’clock train, and it’s—seven minutes of five now!” yelled the manufacturer, glancing at his watch. “Here, wrap it quick, and send the office boy kiting with it fast as you can.”

“Dan has gone for the mail, sir,” said the office man.

“Then hustle with it yourself,” ordered Saxton.

“You forget that I am lame,” submitted the bookkeeper reproachfully.

“It’s got to go,” stormed the manufacturer. “Hold on, there.”

He shouted these last words at Ben just as the latter was about to leave the office.

“Yes, sir!” said Ben inquiringly.

“I’ve paid you that money, you know—you’ll do a little extra job, hey?”

“With pleasure,” answered Ben, with his usual bright accommodating smile.

“That’s a good boy,” said Mr. Saxton. “Hustle, now,” to his bookkeeper.

Ben stood awaiting the package from the nervous fingers of the office employee. He was more amused than disappointed in the narrow view Mr. Saxton took of things in general. The quarter of a dollar and the “extra job,” as he designated it, were characteristic of the tight-fisted manufacturer. His treatment of Ben had been of a piece awarded Mr. Hardy, and Ben was not much surprised.

The Saxton Automobile Works was doing a large and growing business, but it was not his own business ability, as the self-centered manufacturer imagined, that had brought about all this progress and prosperity. Mr. Hardy had designed the Estrelle auto. The Saxton Company never gave him credit for this. Ben’s father was more of an inventor than a business man, and he had never protected himself as a shrewder man might have done.

He was a valuable workman in the Saxton service and received very good pay. Ben, however, had always thought that his father should have been given more credit and money that he really got.

Ben’s mother had often talked to her husband about this. Finally Mr. Hardy had gone to Mr. Saxton and had put the case before him. Nearly all the new and popular points about the Estrelle machine were inventions of Mr. Hardy. Jasper Saxton did not deny this, but he proposed that the patents be taken out in his own name. In an indefinite way he agreed to make some kind of an equitable settlement with his employer as soon as the rush season was over. Mr. Hardy asked for a memorandum of the agreement.

To this Mr. Saxton reluctantly consented after a great deal of delay. Mr. Hardy placed the precious document in his coat pocket. When he went back to work he hung up his coat in its usual place. When he got home that night the written agreement was missing.

An unavailing search was made for the document. Then in a day or two Mr. Hardy went back to his employer and related the circumstances, asking for a new copy of the agreement.

Mr. Saxton put him off on the pretext of being very busy. Then, when urged by Mrs. Hardy and Ben, the head machinist again approached Jasper Saxton, the latter told him that if he would wait till the active selling season was over and he could get at his books, they would go together to a lawyer and have a contract drawn up in due legal form.

Mr. Hardy was easily satisfied and rested content with this promise. His heart was in his work. When Ben intimated that he was dealing with a man with a general reputation for business slipperiness, his father told him that it would come out all right. He was sanguine that Mr. Saxton would do the liberal thing by him as soon as the selling season was over.

“Here you are,” said the bookkeeper, at last completing the packing of the steel fittings.

“Where am I to deliver it?” inquired Ben, accepting the parcel.

“Name’s on the bag,” explained Jasper Saxton hurriedly.

Ben glanced at the bag and read the name: “John R. Davis.”

“All right,” he said. “Will he be at the depot?”

“He is leaving for Blairville on the five o’clock train,” said Jasper Saxton. “You’ll know him when you see him—large, tall man with a full beard, and wears gold eye glasses.”

“I will find him if he’s there,” said Ben confidently.

“Don’t delay, boy,” broke in the manufacturer, “you’ve got barely five minutes.”

Ben placed the parcel under his arm and passed from the office. He made a bee-line for the front door, to be interrupted by a shout.

“Hey there, Hardy!”

“I’m in a desperate hurry, Mr. Dunn,” said Ben, recognizing his challenger.

“Never mind—only a moment.” The big foreman got to Ben’s side and gripped his arm. “What did he give you?” he demanded.

“It isn’t fair to tell,” declared Ben, with an evasive smile.

“You’ll tell me,” firmly insisted the foreman.

“Well then—twenty-five.”

“H’m! He gave the night watchman only ten dollars when he saved the shop from burning down. Twenty-five dollars? That’s pretty fair—for Saxton.”

“Don’t delay me, Mr. Dunn,” again pleaded Ben, tugging to get loose.

“Just one more question,” said the foreman.

“Be quick, then.”

“Which do you like best—open face or hunting case watch?”

“Eh?” exclaimed Ben, with a start.

“They’ve started a little appreciation list back there. Come, which is it?”

“Oh, Mr. Dunn!”

“Decide, or we’ll buy you both,” declared Ben’s determined captor.

“Any boy would like an open faced watch,” said Ben.

“All right, you can go now,” said Dunn, with a chuckle.

Ben darted off on a sprint to make up for lost time. It was four blocks to the depot, and he had about three minutes to make it in. As he darted through the front doorway of the works Ben heard the first starting bell ringing out at the depot.

“I’ve got to hustle to make it!” he declared. “No, it can’t be done. I know what I’ll do—I’ll cut across the triangle.”

Ben figured that this short cut across a dumping yard would land him up to the train before it got going at full speed. His calculations, however, were somewhat at fault. As he neared the tracks the train came down the rails at a pretty good rate of speed.

Ben waited till the baggage car and one passenger coach had passed him. Then, hampered by his bundle, he gave it a fling and landed it on the platform of the second coach.

Poising for a spring and a catch, Ben made a grab for the railing of the last car.

Then he gripped firmly at its outer edge. With a wrench he was pulled from the ground, but clung sturdily, his feet flying out in the air like streamers.

CHAPTER III

A NEW FRIEND

“I’VE MADE IT!” PANTED BEN HARDY.

“I’ve made it!” panted Ben Hardy, with a swing landing both feet safely on the platform of the last car of the speeding train.

“Now to find my man,” he added, pausing a moment or two to catch his breath and then entering the coach.

Ben had the name of the man well in mind to whom he was to deliver the machine parts. He also recalled the vague description given of the man by Mr. Saxton. The lad glanced casually at the occupants of the seats on each side of the coach as he proceeded down the aisle of the car.

No tall bearded man with eye glasses showed up, and gaining the front platform of the coach Ben took up the package where it had landed and entered the next car.

“Fare, there,” pronounced the conductor of the train, confronting him.

“Oh, yes,” said Ben with a smile, resting his package on a radiator and producing the quarter Mr. Saxton had given him. “Ought to keep it to frame as a souvenir, I suppose,” added Ben to himself comically, “but it happens to be all the money I’ve got. First stop, conductor—the junction, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go that far. Take fifteen cents out of that,” directed Ben, producing the reward coin.

“It’s twenty-five cents if you don’t have a ticket,” announced the conductor, “ten cents extra, that’s the rule.”

“That’s so,” said Ben with a wry grimace.

“You’d ought to have thought of that,” suggested the conductor.

“I didn’t have much time to think of anything except getting aboard this train double quick,” answered Ben. “You don’t happen to know a gentleman named Mr. Davis, do you, conductor?”

The fare collector shook his head in dissent and proceeded on his round of duty to the rear coach. Ben took up his package again and began to scan the passengers beyond him.

“That twenty-five cent piece ought to have turned out counterfeit to carry out the fun of the thing,” smiled Ben. “There’s a likely prospect—I think it is my man,” added the youth, fixing his eyes upon a person occupying a double seat near the front of the coach.

This individual had a heavy beard, was tall and athletic, wore eye glasses, and was acting excited and nervous. He would glance from his car window and then ahead and back in the coach, and half arose as if to go in search of a train official to ask some important question.

As Ben approached the seats he occupied, he noticed a book of mechanical drawings lying open against the front cushions. Also leaning against the seat were several quite long parcels. The ends of these showed what Ben took to be rods or bars. The man was certainly in the mechanical line, Ben reasoned, and he advanced without hesitation.

“Is this Mr. Davis?” he inquired politely.

“Yes, that’s me,” responded the other, turning quickly and fixing an eager glance on his questioner.

“Glad to have found you,” said Ben. “I am from the Saxton Automobile Works, and this is for you.”

Mr. Davis was so glad to receive the machine part that he took it from Ben’s hands and held it under his own arm as if it were some precious treasure.

“Good for you!” he exclaimed heartily, a pleasant smile chasing away the anxiety on his face. “I was worrying over it, I tell you. I simply had to have it to-day. Here, sit down. I fancy you’ve been doing some fast running, eh?”

“A little,” rejoined Ben with a laugh. “It was jolly, though. You see, a fellow likes to beat a hard task just for practice once in a while.”

Ben sank to a seat greatly enjoying the relief from a severe strain. His companion looked at him with interest and remarked:

“I was afraid that part wasn’t going to reach me. Thought it was strange, too, for I had been very explicit in my directions. I told the Saxton people to spare no expense so I got it in time. As it was a sort of test as to what you folks could do and meant lots of work for your shop in the future, I counted on the right work on time.”

The speaker unpacked the part. Ben knew something about machinery, and observed that it was a double eccentric with several complicated attachments. He recognized it as a class of work always given into his father’s expert hands. It was exquisitely turned, jointed and polished.

“Neat as the works of a watch, eh?” said Mr. Davis admiringly. “That’s what I call fine work.”

“My father always does fine work,” said Ben, with a tinge of pride.

“Oh, your father had a hand in this, did he?” questioned Mr. Davis.

“I think so—yes, I am sure of it,” answered Ben, inspecting the part. “I remember him mentioning it as something outside of the usual run, and wondering what it was to be used for.”

“It is a part of the machinery of my new airship,” explained Mr. Davis.

“Oh, say, is that it?” ejaculated Ben with great animation, and his eyes wandering to the open book on the seat before him, he scanned with interest the outlines of an aeroplane.

“Pleases you, does it?” interrogated his companion.

“Immensely,” acknowledged Ben. “My father is the head mechanic at the Saxton works, and he is an inventor, too. He has got up any number of new improvements on the Estrelle car.”

“I would like to know him,” said Mr. Davis. “I am glad to know you. Let me see, what is your name?”

“Hardy—Ben Hardy.”

“Do you work at the Saxton plant, too, Ben?”

“No, sir,” answered Ben, “but I spend a good deal of my spare time there. Father works there, you see, and I like machinery.”

“How did you come to bring the machine part to me?”

“I happened to be around, and there was no one else to send at the time. The reason it was delayed was that the engine at the works went wild.”

“Is that so? Tell me about it.”

Ben had not calculated on a casual remark leading to a particular explanation. Before he was aware of it he had pretty nearly recited the whole story of the belt mishap at the Saxton shop.

“They ought to do something pretty fine for you, those people,” suggested Mr. Davis. “I am certainly very much obliged to you for your share in getting this machine part to me. I suppose some day you will go to work at the Saxton plant?”

“I am making drafting a special study,” replied Ben, “and I would like to start in at the model desk in the pattern rooms after school is over.”

“Do you follow after your father in the invention line, Ben?” asked Mr. Davis seriously.

“I would like to,” answered Ben. “I hardly think it is in me, though, Mr. Davis. I once got up a perpetual motion machine.”

Mr. Davis smiled, so did Ben.

“Yes,” nodded the latter gaily, “it perpetuated until I had to start it again. The only practical thing I ever did was a whistle which I made out of a simple piece of tin.”

“Patented it, did you?”

“Oh, dear, no,” explained Ben. “I made it for a friend of mine. He could warble on it like a mocking bird. I never saw anybody else who could, though. There was a certain knack about it that he could get, it seemed. Can I look over that book, Mr. Davis?”

Ben was soon immersed in the drawings before him. His companion seemed greatly pleased at his interest in them. Once or twice, too, he took occasion to commend Ben for some comment or suggestion he made concerning the models.

“Why,” he said as they came to the last drawing of a superb machine, “you seem to have done some digging in the aeroplane line.”

“Oh, all I know is second hand,” declared Ben. “My father believes that the coming motor is the aeroplane, and has done some experimenting in that line. I have taken a great delight in watching him and helping him. I will have to leave the train in a few minutes, Mr. Davis,” he added. “There is the whistle for the junction now, and I will have to get back to Woodville.”

“Two things, Ben,” said Mr. Davis as he rose from the seat. “It is a big thing for me to get that machine part on time. Here is something for your trouble,” and he handed out a folded bank note.

“Oh, no,” dissented Ben, arising quickly.

“Oh, yes,” insisted Mr. Davis. “Here’s the second thing,” and he pressed a card into Ben’s hand after writing something on its back. “I want you to ask your father to let you come down to the big aero meet at Blairville next week. That card will admit you anywhere about the grounds. I shall be in great evidence there, to speak modestly,” smiled Mr. Davis, “and I will take pleasure in showing you some things that will set that active head of yours buzzing for a spell.”

Ben’s eyes glowed over the welcome invitation.

“I don’t know anything that would give me more pleasure than to see those airships go up,” said the youth.

“Be sure to come—I shall expect you,” declared Mr. Davis, shaking hands warmly.

“Here’s luck!” exclaimed Ben, as he alighted on the junction platform, ran across it, and got aboard a train just starting in an opposite direction for Woodville, the conductor of which he knew very well, and who had the privilege of passing friends short distances.

He had calculated on a two-hours’ wait at the junction, and here was the afternoon accommodation train, twenty minutes late, but just in time to start him homeward bound without a minute’s delay.

Ben reached Woodville and went up to the automobile works at once. It lacked half an hour of quitting time, and he decided he had better report the safe delivery of the machine part at the office. Besides that, he would have a chance to walk home with his father.

“Oh, it’s you?” observed Mr. Saxton, as he entered the office.

“Yes, sir,” replied Ben.

“Did you deliver the parcel to Mr. Davis?”

“I did, Mr. Saxton. I managed to just catch the train on the fly.”

“How was that?”

Ben explained.

“Then you had to go clear to the junction?”

“Or jump off,” smiled Ben.

“H’m—cost you fifteen cents, then?”

“No, sir, a quarter. You see there’s an extra ten cents when you do not buy your ticket in advance.”

“H’m!” again commented the manufacturer. “You ought to get back that rebate. Here, Smith,” to the bookkeeper, “give Hardy twenty-five cents.”

“Oh, no,” dissented Ben, and Saxton brightened up magically. “Mr. Davis insisted on giving me five dollars.”

“He did, eh?” spoke Jasper Saxton thoughtfully.

“Yes, sir. He was very glad to get the machine part, and insisted on paying me for what he called my trouble.”

“Very good. Glad. That is—h’m—you see—quite right, Hardy.”

At first Ben fancied that Jasper Saxton was going to suggest that he divide up the five dollars with the company. However, Mr. Saxton dismissed him with a wave of the hand and Ben went in search of his father.

He recited his recent experience, showed him the five-dollar bill with some pride in his face, and told his father he would wait till quitting time and go home with him.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to change that programme, Ben,” advised Mr. Hardy.

“How is that, father?”

“Mr. Saxton wants the engine overhauled and that shaft reset, and I will have to put in a few hours extra time, so I shall not go home till later.”

“What about supper, father?” inquired Ben.

“Oh, I’ll pick up something at a restaurant.”

“Mother will insist on sending something to you, I know,” prophesied Ben.

“Well, I won’t say that home cooking wouldn’t suit me best,” confessed Mr. Hardy.

Ben started from the shop, when Caleb Dunn hailed him with the words:

“Hold on there, young man.”

“All right,” responded Ben, smiling.

The foreman gained Ben’s side. He drew a shop-soiled sheet of paper from the pocket of his working blouse.

“Every man in the shop,” he announced.

“Every man what?” queried Ben.

“Name signed to the document.”

“What for?”

“Subscription.”

“Oh!” said Ben, guessing and flushing.

“Understand, do you?” demanded the iron fisted, warm hearted foreman with a grim chuckle. “Testimonial—Watch—Open face—Solid gold—Get out.”

He gave Ben a shove and shook his fist playfully at him, and the boy went on his way laughing and feeling joyful.

Ben had to tell the story of the day’s experience all over again when he reached home. His mother said little, as between the lines she read the noble impulses that had actuated the good son of a good father in striving to do his duty and be of benefit to others. She kissed him fondly, however, and her eyes were moist and loving as after supper he started for the works with the basket of food she had prepared for Mr. Hardy.

Ben found the works closed down and his father overhauling some tools, ready to set at work when the foreman, who lived near by, returned from his supper. Mr. Hardy said that they would finish their work by about ten o’clock.

“Let me come up about nine o’clock and watch around, father, and go home with you,” suggested Ben.

“I am always glad of your company, my son,” said Mr. Hardy.

“All right, I’ll be here,” said Ben.

He did not go directly home. It was a pleasant evening, and Ben leisurely strolled about the downtown streets, taking in the sights of the liveliest hour of the day among the stores.

“Hello!” he said, quickening his steps as he caught the sound of music, and following its source he noticed a crowd gathered about a corner curb.

As Ben neared the group he discovered a street piano mounted on wheels, being operated by a man. Standing by him was his partner. The latter had a piece of tin between his lips. Keeping in tune with the hurdy gurdy, he was producing beautiful liquid notes that rang out clear and musical as the soaring notes of a lark.

The crowd was enchanted. The music was novel and harmonious. The whistle gave out notes as clear and pure as those of a flute.

The tune ended. Ben Hardy watched the whistler remove the piece of tin from between his lips. As he did so Ben started forward, his eyes fixed upon the little device intently.

“Why!” exclaimed Ben in profound astonishment, “that is the very whistle I invented for Bob Dallow.”

CHAPTER IV

THE “SYBILLINE” WHISTLE

The whistle he had invented and the name Bob Dallow instantly carried back the mind of Ben to what he looked upon as the pleasantest part of his young life.

About six months previous to the opening of this story Bob Dallow had put in an appearance at the Hardy home. Neither Ben nor his parents had ever seen him before, but the homeless orphan boy had received a hearty welcome.

It appeared that he was the son of a half sister of Mrs. Hardy, and he had come into the Hardy household in such a lively, manly fashion that he had won all their hearts at once.

“Just looking up my scattered relations as I hop about the world, Aunt Mary,” he had announced to Mrs. Hardy. “Here to-day and there to-morrow. I won’t bother you more than this afternoon and to-night. It makes a fellow feel he’s got something to tie to, you know, when he gets lonely, so I thought I would drop in on you.”

Bob had been an orphan for two years. Thrown on his own resources, he had gone to work on the first job that offered with a smile, and left it for another one with a hurrah. He fascinated Ben with the happy, good-natured way in which he took the ups and downs of business life.

“Every regular job I get,” declared Bob, airily, “there was a separate and distinct hoodoo about it. For instance, the first man I worked for was a groceryman. He confidentially instructed me on his short weight tactics one night and I left the next morning. My second employer was a clothier. He insisted on paying off my first month’s salary in a suit damaged by fire and water and four sizes too big for me, so I left him and became a clerk in a dry goods store. My boss there nearly starved me and made me sleep on a box under a stairway. I pined for fresh air and took to the road.”

Bob explained that “taking to the road” meant for him, first, a ticket collector for a side show at a circus, next, a brief career at driving a band wagon, and lastly as a chauffeur.

“I am now pretty good at handling a machine,” he declared, “and am on my way to a new job for a crack automobile man who makes a specialty of racing for prizes.”

Bob brought a rather exciting atmosphere into the quiet Hardy home, but it did not harm any. He succeeded in stirring up some new ideas in the active mind of Ben, but the latter, his folks knew, loved home life too fondly to ever become a confirmed rover. Then, too, Bob was a boy of excellent principles. There was no bravado or recklessness about his exuberant spirits. He was manly and always seeing the bright side of things, adventurous and undaunted by trivial disappointments.

“I’ll make it some day—in a big way. I feel it in my bones,” he insisted hopefully.

“I hope you do,” replied Ben.

“So will you,” declared Bob, enthusiastically, the next day, when, in showing his guest about his little work room at home, Ben brought to light a whistle he had invented. It consisted of a bent circle of tin. This was perforated on one side, and this in connection with a peculiar shaping of the outer lip of the device enabled a person to give out a shrill call that could be heard fully a mile distant on a quiet day.

Ben had distributed freely samples of his handicraft among his boy chums, and on picnic occasions the woods would ring with what his comrades called a bird call. The modest young inventor noticed, however, that most of the users of the whistles never got much beyond a commonplace squeak, while the shrill efforts of the adepts scared the birds away instead of attracting them.

Bob Dallow put a new phase on the affair. His twenty-four hours’ visit expanded and was encouraged to five days. The last afternoon of his stay, when Ben came home from school he was somewhat excitedly invited by his popular chum to accompany him to the garden.

“See her,” said Bob, “—or rather, listen.”

Bob placed the whistle between his lips. He began a tune, carried it through, and finished it with a flush of triumph.

“I declare!” exclaimed the delighted Ben, lost in admiration of his friend’s splendid efforts. “I never heard better music.”

Patience and practice had enabled Bob to become a master of the little device.

“It’s a big thing,” he insisted, “and if I were you I’d have it patented. I won’t say that anybody can play it—not everybody can play a cornet, either. You’ve got to cultivate what they call the horn lip to do that. You’ll find lots that can do it, though. I am one of them. ‘Home, Sweet Home’ with variations, listen.”

“Why, Bob,” exclaimed Mrs. Hardy, whom the boys found standing near by quite enraptured with the fine performance of her young guest.

Bob influenced Ben to make him a dozen of the little whistles. When he left the Hardys the next morning with many happy thanks for their kindness to him, his words to Ben were:

“I am going to make some money out of that whistle—see if I don’t.”

The prediction had somewhat faded out of Ben’s mind after the departure of their lively visitor. Bob wrote to him only once, telling him that he was enjoying life as a chauffeur for a liberal employer. For over two months, however, no word had come from the roving boy. As to the whistle, Ben had nearly forgotten about that. Now the subject came up to his mind in quite a forcible way on the public streets of Woodville.

Ben was following the impulse to go forward and request the whistler to let him have a look at the device he used to render such melliferous sounds, when the man at the piano stepped in front of the instrument.

He drew open the flaps of a little satchel swung from his shoulder, revealing a number of tin whistles.

“The Sybilline whistle, gentlemen,” he announced in broken English. He was apparently of the better class of foreign street musicians. “This ees not a toy. It ees a musical instrument. We don’t say all ones can play as does these professore at my sides. But practeese he make perfects. Only ten cents, gentlemen.”

The man with the whistle gave out a vivid and rapid series of thrills, tremolos and bird imitations. A number of purchasers handed up their dimes, Ben among them. Then he retired to one side and closely inspected the whistle.

“Yes,” he said, his heart beating a trifle faster with pleasure and pride, “it is the same, it is my invention.”

Ben went up to the whistler, who had now ceased playing and was strolling to one side while his partner continued his appeals for purchasers in the crowd.

“Mister,” asked Ben, extending his bought whistle, “where do you get these.”

“The Sybilline—yes,” politely answered the man addressed. “At the city, my friend.”

“Where in the city?” pressed Ben.

“At the Central.”