Page:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle.djvu/34

24 gage is set for a thousand feet instead of two hundred. I forgot to change it. The charge, after passing through the steel plate, and the scarecrow figure, destroying the latter, went on, and shot through the side of your house."

"Ha! I knew you were trying to shoot me!" exclaimed the still angry man. "I'll have the law on you for this!"

"Oh, that's all nonsense!" broke in Ned Newton. "Everybody knows Tom Swift wouldn't try to shoot you, or any one else, Mr. Moker."

"Then why did he shoot at me?"

"That was a mistake," explained Tom, "and I apologize to you for it."

"Humph! A lot of good that would do me, if I'd been killed!" muttered the miser. "I'm going to sue you for this. You might have put me in my grave."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Tom.

"Why impossible?" demanded the visitor.

"Because I had so set the rifle that almost the entire force of the electrical bullet was expended in blowing apart the scarecrow figure I made, for a test," explained Tom. "All that passed through your house was a small charge, and, if it had hit you there would have been no more than a little shock, such as you would feel in taking hold of an electric battery."