course you can use the shops here as much as you want, and Mr.
Sharp, Mr. Jackson, and I will help you all we can. Only don't be
disappointed, that's all."

"I won't, Dad. Suppose you come out to my shop and I'll show
you a sample battery I've been testing for the last week. I have
it geared to a small motor, and it's been running steadily for
some time. I want to see what sort of a record it's made."

Father and son crossed the yard, and entered a shop which the
lad considered exclusively his own. There he had made many
machines, and pieces of apparatus, and had invented a number of
articles which had been patented, and yielded him considerable of
an income.

"There's the battery, Dad," he said, pointing to a complicated
mechanism in one corner.

"What's that buzzing noise?" asked Mr. Swift. "That's the
little motor I run from the new cells. Look here," and Tom
switched on an electric light above the experimental battery,
from which he hoped so much. It consisted of a steel can, about
the size of the square gallon tin in which maple syrup comes, and
from it ran two wires which were attached to a small motor that
was industriously whirring away.

Tom looked at a registering gauge connected with it.

"That's pretty good," remarked the young inventor.