exacting a promise that he would come to see him.

"Come and talk of our dear Fatherland," he said. And Loeb went.

As he was ushered into the library by the maid, he unexpectedly met Louise. Both colored, but Loeb's was the selfpossession which best responded in the emergency. He bowed, stood aside for her to pass, and bowed again. She went down the hall in a sort of daze, and five minutes later was in her room sobbing on her bed, she knew not why.

Loeb found Schultze most agreeable, well read, and interested in electrical matters. He could not understand his host's insistence that he go into the details of the difference between telephone equipment service and cost in Chicago, Berlin, and other cities. Loeb was delighted to find so willing a listener; and as he could tell from practical or theoretical knowledge of the workings of many of them, the average "time per call," the hours when the "load of traffic" reached the "peak," he talked interestingly and well. "Wonderful," Schultze would say at

times.

The shrewd German alderman had a purpose in his questions and his patient listening, for he was determined that his vote on the franchise would be based on facts and justice.

"Come again," he told Loeb when they parted at the door about midnight.

And Loeb did go again; and again he was permitted to ride his hobby unmolested, and Schultze was told of the work done by the departments of maintenance, traffic, construction, installation, and of the thousands of details which each day were cared for in the handling of millions of calls per month.

"Ah, I shall be most happy if I can be a switchboard expert," Loeb sighed. The spell still held him fascinated by the intricacies necessary to produce simplicity for telephoning.

A week later, Loeb was again summoned into Superintendent Frost's office. He went with clenched teeth, recalling the events three months before when Louise saw him confronted by a suspicion -her suspicion, he thought-of theft. He was wholly oblivious to the fact that a decisive vote had been had in the Council the previous night, and the Company

had won because Sigmund Schultze not only had changed his vote but had made a speech exhorting the others to do the

same.

Frost had known that Loeb and Schultze had talked long and often of late about telephone service; and when Schultze changed front, he told the president it was due to Loeb, and told about Loeb and his degrees..

"Can you do Loeb a favor?" inquired the president.

"Yes, it is his highest ambition to be on a switchboard." "Fix it."

So, when Loeb, with set face, entered his office, Frost shot the question at him. casually:

"Would you care to help us out on one of the switchboards, Professor ?"

Loeb stammered that he would be glad to live and die in switchboard work study, he called it.

"All right, report to-morrow."

Loeb did not answer, and Frost looked around for an explanation of the silence. Tears were trickling down Loeb's cheeks.

"I cannot accept such distinction while the suspicion which I have not yet been able to disprove is hanging over me," he said at last.

Frost whistled his surprise.

"Why, man, I do not suspect you," he started to say.

Loeb then did a strange thing, for he walked out of the office and straight off to Sigmund Schultze's residence. He sent his card to Louise.

She came in very much perturbed, in fact on the verge of hysterics. He bowed.

"Do you suspect I stole your necklace, Miss Schultze? I can think of no way to prove that I did not." This he blurted out as his greeting. "Do you think I would steal anything?" "Yes," she said.

He started and clenched his fists. But Louise was not in a mood to note his unconsciously heroic pose or the sadness. in his eyes.

"Yes, Professor Loeb, I suspect you, for I know you have done it. But you did not take my necklace, and I never for a moment thought you did. No one did. I lost it and afterward found it. But I wanted you to come back some time."

K

years,

T is rather remarkable that in spite of varied and novel forms which marine enterprise is assuming of late no attempt has hitherto been made to grapple with the question of the salvage of derelicts on a systematic basis. Seaboard salvage has become a pursuit comprehending vast possibilities; the treasures of foundered galleons are being wrested from the mud of centuries in Vigo Bay, and the costly fittings of the Armada from the sand of Tobermory; and the towage of a floating dry-dock from New York to Manila is the latest expression of American genius in the seafaring world. But the Seven Seas are dotted with masterless craft of every size and condition, derelict hulls of substantial value and cargoes rich in price-yet this field of endeavor continues unworked, this harvest of the ocean unreaped.

The chief difficulty in the way heretofore has been the inability to locate these waifs, for no report of them could be

made until the sighting ship reached port, maybe many days later; but now that wireless telegraphy is becoming an indispensable adjunct to marine progress, this drawback is partially overcome and will be less serious as the employment of that agency grows. Already measures are on foot for the inauguration of a derelict-hunting enterprise by capitalists along the seaboard from New England northward, with headquarters at St. John's, N. F., a strong impetus thereto having been imparted by the case of the derelict tramp steamer Dunmore, which was knocking about the western ocean for more than three months last winter, and eventually either foundered or drifted into the Sargasso Sea, the fabled haven of countless deep-sea wonders.

There are in marine records few counterparts of the case of this luckless vessel, which for that period was an aimless errant, the worst menace to the safety of life and property at sea in the remembrance of any living sailor who plies his calling on the North Atlantic. Leav

ing Cardiff on December 20, for Newport News, this 3,500-ton freighter, with 3,000 tons of coal aboard, ship and cargo being worth about $70,000, was beset by the furious blizzards that assailed shipping about the end of the year, and, after battling with them until she broke her shaft and became helpless, she was buffeted so sorely that on January 19 her crew abandoned her 600 miles northeast of Cape Cod, they being taken off by a passing ship and landed at Baltimore. She was leaking steadily, they claimed, and they expected her quickly to founder, but she did not. On the contrary she was sighted by 22 steamers, towed some distance by two, boarded by boats from five, and set on fire by one, between that date and March 29, since which time no trace of her has been found, though a sealing steamer from St. John's, and five British warships from Bermuda, scoured the ocean in quest of her.

Could she have been secured by a salving steamer and got into port, it would have meant an award of at least $35,000; for "half their hand" is the lowest figure which Admiralty Courts allow ocean sålvors, and if the circumstances are excep

tional a larger sum is granted. In the case of the steamer Wilkinson, abandoned in the North Sea in October, 1904, under similar circumstances, and valued at $14,000, the award to three travelers which participated in her conveyance to port was $7,250. One of these had first come upon the Wilkinson's crew in open boats, they having abandoned her in the belief that she was about to sink. The traveler rescued them, went back and found the derelict, and then towed her forty miles. to land, when she cast off, the other being in imminent danger, apparently, of foundering. But two others subsequently came upon her and tugged her into port, each of these getting two-fifths of the above sum, and the first craft onefifth, for towage and services rendered.

The Dunmore's case attracted special attention, because, being an iron steamer, with a heavy cargo of coal aboard, and she, at the last, partly on her beam-ends and water-logged withal, she would prove an adversary which not even the stoutest battleship or the staunchest mailboat could afford to ignore in fog or darkness; and, furthermore, because she was zig-zagging across the ocean liner track and menacing the great ferries, one of which, the St. Louis, sighting her at midnight on March 14, had to deviate from her own course to escape collision with this formidable hulk. The weather,

luckily, was fine and bright, and the lookout descried her promptly. But had

she might sink some first-class greyhound and cause them a loss of millions. Accordingly they chartered the sealer Adventure, of St. John's, to go in quest of her, and also induced the British naval authorities to send the Bermuda squadron upon the same errand. This, therefore, indicates wherein the derelict-hunting project would secure its strongest backing the underwriters would befriend it because it would lessen the annual total of their losses, by reason of the number of abandoned craft which would be secured and brought back to land.

Its second source of gain would be in the prizes themselves. The derelict is no rarity to mariners, and the American

Some of these timber-carriers remain afloat for years, such is their buoyancy; but it is rare for an iron steamer, deserted in such a plight as the Dunmore was, to keep above water many hours after its pumps are "untended;" they usually sink like a plummet. Her amazing vitality must be taken as a tribute to the superior construction of iron hulls twenty years ago, when she was launched, over the steel shells of the present day.

Nine years ago, the steamer Loch Maree proved a gold mine for a salvage corporation. Early in 1897 she left Norfolk, Virginia, with a cargo of cotton for Dundee, and was assailed by tempests off the north coast of Ireland, the delay