acid made the water bubble and the hydrogen come out of the tube, would it be safe to light it like a gas jet? No, because there was no pressure and the flame would backfire into the jar.

He removed the tube and bent it in the flame of a bunsen burner. He thrust the short end back through the cork and ducked the other end into a bowl of water. Then he poured in a little acid and watched. Sure enough, bubbles began to rise and the glass grew warm, even hot Presently corresponding bubbles appeared on the surface of the bowl. He stirred in a little soap so that he could see them better, and they collected in iridescent masses.

Gosh, he had the stuff, but was it safe to touch it off? He sat down and ran his fingers through his chestnut curls and studied his apparatus. Flame could not possibly backfire through solid water. Hadn’t he figured this thing out himself? So he applied a match to the soap bubbles and was rewarded by a delightful fusillade—like a machine gun about a thousand miles away and ten years off. “Not dead yet, dad.”

“No, not yet,” smiled Chase Mahan.

Chapter 2. Helium

Three years passed, and Marvin was in the high school without having blown his eyes out. He was distinctly tamer now, though still afflicted with excess of leisure because his mathematics cost him so little. He always had time for sports, and the boy of fifteen was madly fond of dancing.

That summer his father took him on a long prospecting trip in the wilds of Canada and watched him develop into young manhood. Every morning they had their swim together in the pellucid purity of some lake rarely seen by the eyes of white men. All day long they searched ravine and gully, moving slowly from east to west across the continental formation. Every night they lay by the camp-fire and talked about many things, sometimes about the future. It was agreed that Marvin should be a chemist, but Chase kept drilling it in that early specialization was bad. He had suffered from it all his life, and wanted his boy to go slow.

Near the end of the trip the mining engineer slipped in crossing a slope of rock, and fell. When he arose, his right hand was so useless and painful that he suspected some bones had been broken. The first thing he did on reaching Chicago was to proceed to the hospital and have the swollen hand radiographed. One bone was found to be split, and the sufferer was led to another room that the hand might be immobilized.

Thus left 

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