y.

"Tell me, what would they be doing with electric torches, and black
masks? Now, you can see that these have been pretty well used; they're
not new ones just cut out by pattern at home with mother's scissors.
These have been made by an experienced operator, and were bought either
for a mask ball or some other purpose."

"Well, perhaps we'll never know the truth about it," grumbled Andy, who
never liked anything to puzzle him and would lie awake half the night
trying to find the answer to a conundrum that had been offered to him by
a boy friend.

"Oh! yes, I've got a hunch that we will," chirped his cousin, with a
sublime confidence that quite won Andy's heart; if he could not see any
good reason for hope himself, the fact that his chum pinned his faith on
it was enough to bolster up his own courage.

Meanwhile they were both as busy as bees, and the work was approaching
completion.

"What are you looking up every little while that way for?" Frank asked,
after noticing that Andy cocked his eye upward several times, and
appeared to be scanning the heavens in an expectant manner; "the day is
all right, so far as wind goes, and we ought to get along home without a
bit of trouble."

"Oh! I wasn't bothering my head about that part of it," the other
replied, with a scornful smile. "We've been out in all sorts of weather;
and now that we have a chance to try this new invention of the Wrights',
that makes it next to impossible to tilt an aeroplane over no matter how
you move around when up in the air, we can feel safer than ever. Even a
fool would be kept from meeting with an accident when protected by that
wonderful balancing bar that responds to the slightest movement of the
human body."

"Then it was something else you had on your mind, was it, Andy?"

"Well, I was wondering just what took Percy and Sandy out at daybreak
this morning, that's all," replied the other.

"What's that? Did you see them pass over in their biplane this morning?"
demanded the other.

"Felix woke me up at dawn to tell me there was a queer chugging
overhead, that sort of scared him. I jumped up, because of course I knew
what that must mean. And sure enough I was just in time to see a biplane
pass over at a good height, and head up the lake. I lost it back of the
barn, because a flock of crows came flying along, stretching out for a
mile or two; and among the lot I couldn't make out just what was biplane
and which was crow. It was pretty