had left the room,. "I've got to fix it so that Eradicate stays
at home with father. He doesn't really know how old and broken he
is--poor fellow."

"His heart is green, Tom. That's what is the matter with Rad."

"He is a loyal old fellow. But I shall take Koku with me, not
Rad," and the young inventor spoke decidedly. "And that is going
to trouble poor Rad a lot."

The prospect of going West, however, was not the main subject
of Tom's thoughts at this time. As the weeks passed and the end
of the six months of experiment came nearer, the inventor was
more and more troubled by the principal difficulty which had from
the first confronted him. Speed.

That was the mark he had set himself. A maximum speed of two
miles a minute on a level track for the Hercules 0001. With the
speed already attained by both steam and electric locomotives in
the more recent past, this was by no means an impossible
attainment, as Tom quite well knew.

But he became convinced that the conditions under which he
labored made it impossible for him to be positive of just how
great a speed on a straight, level track his invention would
attain.

There was no electrified stretch of railroad near Shopton on
which the Hercules 0001 might be tested. The track inside the
Swift Company's enclosure did not offer the conditions the