He called Andy to come and help him wind his exposed film on the crude, improvised film racks that had lately been beer kegs, and closed the dark room door upon the last empty bucket that had been carried in full.  In the dull light of the ruby lamp he carefully wound his long strip of exposed negative, emulsion side out, around the keg which Andy held for him.  His developer bath was ready, and he immersed the film-jacketed keg slowly, with due regard for bubbles of air.

“You may not know it, but right here in this dark room is where I look for the real test of success or failure,” he confided to Andy, while he rocked the keg gently in the barrel.  “I wish I could afford a good camera-man; but then, the most of them wouldn’t work with this kind of an outfit; they’d demand all the laboratory conveniences, and that would run into money.  Ever notice that when you can’t get anything but the crudest kind of tools to work with, you generally have to use them yourself?  But it will take more than—­oh, hell!”

“What’s wrong?” Andy Green bent his brown head anxiously down beside Luck’s fast graying mop of hair, and peered at the images coming out of the yellowish veil that had hidden them.  “Ain’t they good?”

Luck reached into the water tank and splashed a little water on his film to check it while he looked.  “Now, what in the name of—­” He scowled perplexedly down at the streaked strips.  “What do you suppose streaked it like that?” He lifted worried, gray eyes to Andy’s apprehensive frown, and looked again disgustedly at the negative before he dropped it back with a splash into the developer.

“No good; she’s ruined,” he said in the flat tone of a great disappointment.  “Eighty feet of film gone to granny.  Well, that’s luck for you!”

Andy reached gingerly into the barrel and brought up the keg so that he could take another look.  He had owned a kodak for years and had done enough amateur developing to know that something had gone very wrong here.

“What ails the darned thing?” he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who was scowling abstractedly into his barrels of “soup.”

“You can search me,” Luck replied dully.  “Looks like I’d been stung with a bunch of bum chemicals.  Either that, or something’s wrong with our tanks here.”  He reached down and pulled up the keg by its hooped top, glimpsed a stain on his finger and thumb and let the keg slip hastily over into the pure water so that he could examine the stains.

“Iron!  Iron, sure as thunder!” he exclaimed suddenly.  “Those iron hoops are what did it.”  He rubbed his hand vexedly.  “I knew better than that, too.  I don’t see why I didn’t think about those hoops.  Of all the idiotic, fool—­”

“What kinda brain do you think you’ve got in your head, anyway?” Andy broke in spiritedly.  “Way you’ve been working it lately, engineering every blamed detail yourself, you oughtn’t to wonder if one little thing gets by you.”