ch
time after to-day except on Saturdays. To-morrow classes will be in full
swing. Get in now and take my seat."

Ernest tucked his screwdriver deep in his pocket, pulled his goggles
over his eyes and, seating himself behind Bill, directed his actions. A
thrilling two hours followed for Bill.

When at last they returned to the vicinity of the hangar from which they
had started, they found an excited and angry group around Horace
Jardin's aeroplane. Something was wrong with it and the two mechanics
working over it were unable to find out why the machine refused to fly.
It refused, indeed, to rise from the ground and the engine worked with a
peculiar jolt. The sound of the bugle from the high ground in front of
the mess hall called them to lunch and they went off, leaving the men
still at work. Horace was in a very bad humor, and as usual indulged
himself in a number of foolish threats, the least of which was to scrap
the whole machine.

"I will do it sure as shooting!" he blustered. "If that machine isn't
going to come up to the maker's guarantee, I will make my dad get me one
that will. I won't tinker round with any one-horse bunch of junk like
this looks to be."

"Give it a chance," suggested Bill soothingly.

"Not a darned chance!" declared Jardin. "I tell you my father promised
me an aeroplane, and he has got to come across with a good machine! He
will do it, too. He's too stuck on me to risk my being hurt. And he
knows it is not my fault. I can fly all right."

"Don't junk it, anyhow," said Frank anxiously.

"Want to buy it?" asked Bill.

"I might," said Frank, "provided Horace doesn't charge too much."

"If she won't fly, I will sell her to you for five hundred dollars,"
declared Horace. "You can tie a string to her, and Bill here can have
her to lead around the lot."

"That's a go," said Frank. Everyone laughed, but a look of cunning
suddenly flamed in Frank's eyes. He commenced to lay a train for
Jardin's anger to burn upon, a sort of fuse leading up to the explosion
Frank wished. He cast a quick glance at the others. It was evident that
they took the whole conversation as a joke. But Frank, with an arm over
Jardin's hunched shoulders, commenced pouring into his willing ears a
stream of abuse directed at the makers of Horace's beautiful plane, and
an account, invented on the spot, of divers people who had thrown over
their planes for just the reason which had so angered Horace. Frank,
with his real w