years younger than Clewe. This was Mrs. Margaret Raleigh,
partner with Roland Clewe in the works at Sardis, and, in fact,
the principal owner of that great estate. She was a widow, and
her husband had been not only a man of science, but a very rich
man; and when he died, at the outset of his career, his widow
believed it her duty to devote his fortune to the prosecution and
development of scientific works. She knew Roland Clewe as a hard
student and worker, as a man of brilliant and original ideas, and
as the originator of schemes which, if carried out successfully,
would place him among the great inventors of the world.

She was not a scientific woman in the strict sense of the word,
but she had a most thorough and appreciative sympathy with all
forms of physical research, and there was a distinctiveness and
grandeur in the aims towards which Roland Clewe had directed his
life work which determined her to unite, with all the power of
her money and her personal encouragement, in the labors he had
set for himself.

Therefore it was that the main part of the fortune left by
Herbert Raleigh had been invested in the shops and foundries at
Sardis, and that Roland Clewe and Margaret Raleigh were partners
and co-owners in the business and the plant of the establishment.

"I am glad to welcome you back," said she, her hand in his. "But
it strikes me as odd to see you come upon a horse; I should have
supposed that by this time you would arrive sliding over the
tree-tops on a pair of aerial skates."

"No," said he. "I may invent that sort of thing, but I prefer to