s on shape, then shoots suddenly
aloft, clearing the encircling tops of the bending, twisting and
tormented trees, straight into the heart of the gale, where for one
breathless moment it whirls madly about like a thing distraught, then
in slow but triumphant obedience to the master hand that guides it,
steadies and mounts majestically upward till it is lost to their view in
the depths of impenetrable darkness.

Orlando Brotherson has accomplished his task. He has invented a
mechanism which can send an air-car straight up from its mooring place.
As the three watchers realise this, Oswald utters a cry of triumph,
and Doris throws herself into Mr. Challoner's arms. Then they all stand
transfixed again, waiting for a descent which may never come.

But hark! a new sound, mingling its clatter with all the others. It is
the rain. Quick, maddening, drenching, it comes; enveloping them in wet
in a moment. Can they hold their faces up against it?

And the wind! Surely it must toss that aerial messenger before it and
fling it back to earth, a broken and despised toy.

"Orlando?" went up in a shriek. "Orlando?" Oh, for a ray of light in
those far-off heavens For a lull in the tremendous sounds shivering the
heavens and shaking the earth! But the tempest rages on, and they can
only wait, five minutes, ten minutes, looking, hoping, fearing, without
thought of self and almost without thought of each other, till suddenly
as it had come, the rain ceases and the wind, with one final wail of
rage and defeat, rushes away into the west, leaving behind it a sudden
silence which, to their terrified hearts, seems almost more dreadful to
bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone.

Orlando was in that shout of natural forces, but he is not in this
stillness. They look aloft, but the heavens are void. Emptiness is where
life was. Oswald begins to sway, and Doris, remembering him now and
him only, has thrown her strong young arm about him, when--What is this
sound they hear high up, high up, in the rapidly clearing vault of the
heavens! A throb--a steady pant,--drawing near and yet nearer,--entering
the circlet of great branches over their heads--descending, slowly
descending,--till they catch another glimpse of those hazy outlines
which had no sooner taken shape than the car disappeared from their
sight within the elliptical wall open to receive it.

It had survived the gale! It has re-entered its haven, and that, too,
withou