s into her brother's brown hands.

"Here, look for yourself," she ordered. Her voice was so imperious that
Roy obeyed immediately.

An instant later his sister's expression of dumfounded amazement was
mirrored on his own straightforward, good-looking countenance.

"Well, as Bud used to say out West, 'if that ain't the beatingest'!" he
gasped.

"What did you read?" demanded Peggy breathlessly. "Repeat it so that I may
be sure my eyes didn't play me a trick."

"Not likely, Sis; the letters are big enough. They show up on that red
painted barn of a place like a big freckle on a pretty girl's chin."

Then he repeated slowly, mimicking a boy reciting a lesson:

"The Mortlake Aeroplane Company. Well, wouldn't that jar you?"

"Roy!" reproved Peggy.

"There's no other way to express it, Sis," protested the boy. "Why, that's
the concern that's been advertising so much recently. Just to think, it
was right at our door, and we never knew it."

"And that hateful old Mr. Harding is interested in it, too, oh!"

The exclamation and its intonation expressed Peggy's dislike of the
gentleman mentioned.

"It's a scheme oh his part to make trouble for us, I'll bet on it," burst
out Roy. "But this time I guess it's no phantom airship, but the real
thing. What time is that naval lieutenant coming to look over the Prescott
aeroplane, Peggy?"

"Some time to-day. He mentioned no particular hour."

"Do you think it possible that he is also going to take in that outfit
down the road?"

"It wouldn't surprise me. Maybe that's why they are just putting up the
sign. They evidently have refrained from doing so till now in order to
keep the nature of their business secret. If we hadn't come back from
Nevada sooner than we expected, we might not have known anything about it
till the navy had investigated and--approved."

Far down the road, beyond the big red building, came a whirl of dust. From
it presently emerged a big maroon car. Peggy scrutinized it through the
glasses.

"Mr. Harding is in that auto," she said, rather quietly for Peggy, as the
car came to a stop in front of the Mortlake Aeroplane Manufacturing
Company's plant.

Shortly before Peggy and Roy Prescott, their aunt, Miss Sallie Prescott,
with whom they made their home, and their chums, Jess and Jimsy Bancroft,
had returned from the Nevada alkali wastes, the red building which engaged
their attention that morning had caused a good deal of speculation in the
humdrum