told you often that it is the most important advance since the
original discovery by the Wrights that the aeroplane could be balanced
by warping the planes."

"I'm just fixing up my third machine," said Norton. "If anything
happens to it, I shall lose the prize, at least as far as this meet is
concerned, for I don't believe I shall get my fourth and newest model
from the makers in time. Anyhow, if I did I couldn't pay for it--I am
ruined, if I don't win that twenty-five-thousand-dollar Brooks Prize.
And, besides, a couple of army men are coming to inspect my aeroplane
and report to the War Department on it. I'd have stood a good chance
of selling it, I think, if my flights here had been like the trials you
saw. But, Kennedy," he added, and his face was drawn and tragic, "I'd
drop the whole thing if I didn't know I was right. Two men dead--think
of it. Why, even the newspapers are beginning to call me a cold,
heartless, scientific crank, to keep on. But I'll show them--this
afternoon I'm going to fly myself. I'm not afraid to go anywhere I send
my men. I'll die before I'll admit I'm beaten."

It was easy to see why Kennedy was fascinated by a man of Norton's
type. Anyone would have been. It was not foolhardiness. It was dogged
determination, faith in himself and in his own ability to triumph over
every obstacle.

We now slowly entered the shed where two men were working over Norton's
biplane. One of the men was a Frenchman, Jaurette, who had worked with
Farman, a silent, dark-browed, weatherbeaten fellow with a sort of
sullen politeness. The other man was an American, Roy Sinclair, a tall,
lithe, wiry chap with a seamed and furrowed face and a loose-jointed
but very deft manner which marked him a born bird-man. Norton's third
aviator, Humphreys, who was not to fly that day, much to his relief, was
reading a paper in the back of the shed.

We were introduced to him, and be seemed to be a very companionable sort
of fellow, though not given to talking.

"Mr. Norton," he said, after the introduction, "there's quite an account
of your injunction against Delanne in this paper. It doesn't seem to be
very friendly," he added, indicating the article.

Norton read it and frowned. "Humph! I'll show them yet that my
application of the gyroscope is patentable. Delanne will put me into
'interference' in the patent office, as the lawyers call it, will he?
Well, I filed a 'caveat' over a year and a half ago. If I'm wrong, he's
w