Ned stayed quite late that night, and promised to come over the next
day, and watch Tom do some more shooting.
"I'll show you how to use it, too," promised the young inventor, and
he was as good as his word, initiating Ned into the mysteries of the
electric rifle, and showing him to store the charges of death-
dealing electricity in the queer-looking stock.
For a week after that Tom and Ned practiced with the terrible gun,
taking care not to have any more mishaps like the one that had
marked the first night. They were both good shots with ordinary
weapons and it was not long before they had equaled their record
with the new instrument.
It was one warm afternoon, when Tom was out in the meadow at one
side of his house, practicing with his rifle on some big boxes he
had set up for targets, that he saw an elderly man standing close to
the fence watching him. When Tom blew to pieces a particularly large
packing-case, standing a long distance away from it, the stranger
called to the youth.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but is that a dynamite gun you are
using?"
"No, it's an electric rifle," was the answer.
"Would you mind telling me something about it?" went on the elderly
man, and as Tom's weapon was now fully protected by patents, the
young inventor cordially invited the stranger to come nearer and see
how it worked.
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