But Mortlake
himself did not take up the silvery aeroplane on this occasion. A new
figure was at the wheel, clad in dainty dark aviation togs and bonnet,
with a fluttering, flowing veil of the same color, which streamed out like
a flag of defiance.

The new driver was Miss Regina Mortlake.

They learned later that the girl had taken frequent flights in the South,
where her father had, for a time, entered into the business of giving
aeroplane flights for money at county fairs and the like. His daughter had
taken naturally to the sport, and was an accomplished air woman. She knew
no fear, and her imperious, ambitious spirit made her a formidable rival
even to the foreign flying women who competed at various international
aviation meets.

While his daughter spun through the air, Eugene Mortlake sat in his little
glass-enclosed office in one corner of the noisy aeroplane plant. Four
finished machines were now ready, and he would have felt capable of facing
any tests with them had it not been for his uneasy fear of the Prescott
aeroplane. But he had evolved a scheme by which he thought he would
succeed in putting Peggy and Roy out of the race altogether. It was in the
making that afternoon in the little office.

Opposite to Mortlake sat two men whom we have seen before. But in the
cheap, but neat suits they now wore, and with their faces clean-shaven of
the growth of stubby beard that had formerly covered them, it would have
been somewhat difficult to recognize the two ill-favored tramps who had
been routed by Peggy in such a plucky manner. But, nevertheless, they were
the men.

"You thoroughly understand your instructions now?" questioned Mortlake, as
he concluded speaking.

The fellow who had been addressed by his companion as Joey, at the time
they encountered Mortlake and Harding on the road to the Galloway farm,
nodded.

"We understand, guv'ner," he rasped out in a hoarse voice; "Slim, here,
and me don't take long ter catch on, eh, Slim?"

"No dubious manner of doubt about that," responded Slim. "An' although I'm
a tramp now, guv'ner, I wasn't allers one. I've held my head as high as
the rest of the good folks of the world. I can play the gentleman to
perfection. Don't you worry."

This Slim--or to give him his correct name--Frederick Palmer, was, as he
declared with such emphasis, a man who had indeed "seen better days," as
the phrase is. Now that he was invested in fair-looking clothes, and was
graced with