"Honest Injun, though," went on Big Sandy, "lots of folks round here are scared plumb stiff over this electricity stuff. Old Poolak's had one of his preaching fits. He's been spreading the word that it warn't fire from the chimney what burned Miz Bobb's roof, but lightning fire what our telegraph conjured down out of the sky. According to his tell, it ain't Scriptural to be taking electricity out of the air and hitching it on to man's contrivances. Johnny allows it's tampering with evil and's goner bring down fire and brimstone on the whole Cove 'less'n folks take axes to our newfangled fixings-"

"Johnny Poolak better mind his own business and not be mixing in with our wires." Lem's chin went out belligerently. "I'm banking turrible strong on this new fixing of Lee's. It's so mysterious-like, it don't seem anyways reasonable. Yet if it works, it'll be the wonderfullest thing what ever happened down here in the Cove."

"Well, I'm for it, strong." Big Sandy flung open the gate to the Renaud yard and went in. Lem followed.

The "new fandangle" that Lee was working on now was an attempt at radio. Telegraphy was wonderful enough. But that took wires, thousands of dollars' worth to reach any distance at all. With radio, one merely sat at a machine, turned a key and picked up sound that went hurtling through the air with only electrical power to bear it on. It seemed unbelievable-yet man was already doing this unbelievable thing. And Lee Renaud, stuck off in the backwoods, had the temerity to make a try at this same wonder.

Lee was subscribing to a magazine now, "The Radio World." Hard study and the endless copying of hook-up designs from its pages was the way he was preparing ground for his next experiment. By degrees he had gathered together in his old workshop such materials as he could lay hands on. His collection was crude enough to have gotten a laugh out of a regular "radio ham," but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

True enough, little rip-roaring Dr. Pendexter, out of the kindness of his heart, had wanted to buy Lee considerable experimental stuff. But somehow the boy's pride had rebelled at being under too much obligation to anyone.

"I thank you, but no, sir," he had stammered, "I can't let you give me everything. It would be different if I could only earn money some way to pay for it-"

"There is a way!" snorted the Doctor. "Only I didn't want you fooling away time at it when you could be going forward with electricity. Hell's bells! You've got too much pride!"

The way of money-making that Dr. Pendexter pointed out to Lee was the gathering of wild plants for medicinal purposes. Now and again the boy sent in little packets of such things as bloodroot, wild ginseng, and bay leaves. Quite a lot of herbs brought in only a few dollars, but that money wisely expended brought back some very wonderful things through the mail. One time it was two pairs of ordinary telephone receivers; another time it was a piece of crystal; again it was a little can of shellac and some special wire. In addition, Lee had gathered together an assortment of his own-a piece of curtain pole, some old curtain rings, a piece of mica that had once acted as "back light" in an ancient buggy top, a length of stout oak board, sundry bits of wire and second-hand screws and nails.

Back in his home town of Shelton, Lee had once listened in at someone else's radio-a sleek affair with all its interior workings neatly housed in a shining wooden case. In those days Lee had never dreamed of aspiring to own a radio, much less aspiring to make one by using an oak board, an old curtain pole and pieces of wire as parts.

Throughout the making, the lanky youths of King's Cove "drapped in" on Lee whenever they could, to see how the work was progressing.

Now, when Big Sandy and Lem hurried along the shady lane in the dusk, and on up to the workshop, they found Tony and little Mackey and Joe Burk already there ahead of them.

"The aerial's done up!" shouted Tony Zita. "Done did it yesterday. Had to finish the job by lantern light."

"I helped!" little Mackey Bobb was fairly bristling with pride. "Us all went up through that funny little door right in the roof of this here house. One end of the wire's hitched to a pole that's lashed onto a chimney. T'other end of the wire is rigged to a scantling what's nailed to the barn."

"And you're countin' on that high-sittin' wire to pick up music out of the air for you?" asked Big Sandy incredulously.

"Jumping catfish, no!" exploded Lee, who was cutting wrapping paper into long strips. "We've got to hitch up a sight of apparatus here in the house, too."

"Ain't there something I can do?" Lem Hicks moved over to the bench where Lee was working.

Soon everybody was hard at it, doing whatever he could on this strange contraption young Renaud was evolving. The younger boys scraped and trimmed at smoothing off the heavy oak plank that was to be the base of the outfit.

Lee had spread around him on table and bench a half dozen "Radio Worlds," propped open to show diagrams full of coils and lines, and lettered at certain points, A, B, C, D, and so on.

"This paper says the timing coil is most important, so we better go mighty careful on that." Lee produced a piece of old-fashioned wooden curtain pole, three inches in diameter. "A ten-inch length is all we need."

When this core was measured and cut, Lee began to wind it smoothly in the strips of tough brown wrapping paper that he had already prepared. As he wound it on, Lem, armed with the little can of shellac and a stiff feather for a brush, bent above the job and carefully shellacked each piece.

After the neatly wrapped core with its dose of the sticky gum had dried out a little, the hardest task of all was undertaken-winding on the wire tuning coil itself. The paper strips had been easy to handle, but managing the lively, wriggling wire was a very difficult task.

"Help, everybody! We've got to step lively to get this thing on right away, while the shellac is still some sticky, so it will hold the wire firm." Lee waved his roll of wire, and there was a general rush for everyone to have a finger in this excitement.

A couple of fellows held the wire taut, and another couple, gripping the ends of the wooden rod with tense fingers, turned it steadily. As the master hand, Lee laid the coils in place at each turn. With even the simple machinery of a lathe and foot pedal, it would have been an easy job to wind the core. But with only excited boyish fingers to grip and turn, the task was one of considerable difficulty. The wire would writhe and knot. Now and again coils slipped and refused to lie smooth.

"Unwind it! Try it again!" Brows bent, mouth set firmly, Lee unwound and rewound, over and over again. This thing had to be right. No use making it if the wire didn't lie smooth and close, without any space at all between the coils.

"Um! That looks sort of like it now!" Lee said with satisfaction as he fastened down the last tag end.

The other boys drew close and gazed upon it pridefully.

"Gosh, it does look right! Slicker'n silk, and 'pears to be real close kin to that there picture in the book," Big Sandy said, holding the illustration of the tuning coil in a "Radio World" up beside their effort in wire and wood. "I thought you was being tollable persnikerty, doing it over so much, but reckon you was right."

"The sliding contacts come next. Wonder if we can mount them now?" In lieu of store-bought metallic contacts, Lee produced a pair of old metal curtain rings. "Got to punch holes in 'em so we can stick in the copper rivets."

And so the work went forward. Night after night the gang met in Lee's workshop. There was a certain amount of the apparatus that even untrained hands could attend to, such as cutting the four-inch squares of paraffined paper and tinfoil, alternating these in a stack, then placing these between two blocks of wood and screwing them tightly together. This was the "condenser" that, according to the printed directions, was to help the electric vibrations pass through the earphone receivers.

Since the human ear alone could not detect the sound waves that touched the aerial, a sort of electrical ear was necessary. And this electrical ear was nothing more than a piece of sensitive galena crystal and a wire of phosphor bronze. If this thing that Lee Renaud was building turned out right, when that phosphor bronze wire came in contact with the bit of crystal, the mysterious sound wave would become audible.

Lee himself attended to the delicate task of mounting the galena crystal and adjusting the two rods that held the sliding contacts, also the soldering of various "lead in" and "lead out" wires.

Then at last it was all done. For Lee Renaud, this was a crucial time. It didn't seem possible that this homemade contraption of wood and wire and old curtain fixtures could really reach out into the ether and pull down music for its users.

According to one of old Pomp's favorite expressions, the young inventor felt "more nervouser than a rabbit what's bin shot at and missed."

He would have liked to have tried out the thing alone. But there was no chance of that. Every youngster in the Cove was packed in that old upstairs workshop. Even a couple of flop-eared 'possum hounds had managed to sneak in at their young masters' heels. Here was a full audience and everything set for a great night.

On the heavy oak base on the table before Lee, the tuning coil, the crystal detector, the condenser, and the terminals for the head phone plugs were arranged and fitted in their proper places. The last cutting, stripping and soldering of connecting wires had been attended to.

"G-gosh, I'm almost afraid to give it a try," muttered Lee to himself. "S'pose it don't work!"

He couldn't keep his hand from trembling as he set one of the sliding contacts at the middle of the tuning coil, and moved the other just about opposite.

Young Renaud had on one pair of ear phones. Jimmy Bobb and Lem Hicks, heads right together, shared the other pair.

Lee, all keyed up to hear something, adjusted the sharp little phosphor bronze wire on the detector until the point just touched the crystal. No sound came. Lee could feel the tenseness of the crowd, could sense the gasp of bitter disappointment from Jimmy and Lem. In desperation, he slowly moved the slider along the tuning coil. Suddenly a burst of orchestra music rolled in to those at the ear phones. Faintly at first, then swelling triumphantly as Lee Renaud slid his contacts along the coil!

Those first listeners sat spellbound till others, eager for their turn, snatched away the ear phones.

Like one in a trance, Jimmy Bobb sat with the music still ringing in his soul.

"Gee," he whispered, "those fiddles, high and sweet, like they was right in the next room!"

"And they were really in Gulf City, fifty miles from here!" laughed young Renaud. "Let's make a try for Madsden. That will be a good bit farther-something like a hundred miles."

Until far into the night the group stayed "tuned in," excitedly swapping phones, eagerly listening to the first real music in their lives.

King's Cove was in touch with the world! It had suddenly come out of the nowhere into the somewhere. A copper rivet slid along a coil of wire, and in a fraction of a second this bunch of boys in faded, ragged overalls was in contact with music in another county, music in another state even!

Then there came a swishing thud against the outside of the house as if made by the recoil of wire.

"S-s-sh!" hissingly whispered little Mackey, who had been peering out of the window. "Something out on the barn roof-like a man with hisself all humped up, creeping, creeping-"

"Somebody's been at our aerial-cut it off!" agonized Lee, realizing to a certainty what that swish of wire against the house had meant.

Another had taken in the situation, too, it seemed. The shutters of the next room were flung open and Great-uncle Gem's voice rang out angrily, "What you up to on that roof? Don't be trespassing on my place, you Johnny Poolak!"

From the slant of the barn roof a fanatical voice croaked back, "Lightning power belongs up in the sky. The Lord's agin humans what steals his lightning. Fire and brimstone! But the wire's cut! And I'm a-saving King's Cove!"

"Better be saving your own hide!" shouted old Gem. And from that second-story window roared a pistol shot.

A thud and a bump from the barn roof. Then footsteps crashing off, running through the underbrush.

Into the radio room limped Gem Renaud, wiping off a smoking, long-barreled old pistol. "Just shot up in the air," he announced angrily. "But I hope I put enough fright into that old nuisance to run him into the next county."