stolen from somewhere?" asked Jess, readily
guessing the drift of her friend's thoughts.

"I don't know, but I'm sure they had no legal right to her," was the
reply.

"Oh, Peg! Suppose she should turn out to be a missing heiress!" Jess,
who loved a romance, clasped her gauntleted hands.

Peggy laughed.

"Missing heiresses are not so common as you might suppose," she said;
"I never met any one who had encountered any, except in story books."

"Still, it would be great if we had really found a long missing child,
or--or something like that," concluded Jess, rather lamely.

"I can't see how we would be benefiting the child or its parents,
either, since we have no way of knowing who the latter are," rejoined
the practical Peggy, which remark closed the discussion for the time
being.

It was not more than half an hour later when Jess uttered a sharp cry
of alarm. From the forward part of the aeroplane a wisp of smoke had
suddenly curled upward. Like a blue serpent of vapor it dissolved in the
air almost so quickly as to make Jess believe, for an instant, that she
had been the victim of an hallucination.

But that it was no figment of the imagination was evidenced a few
moments later by Peggy herself. Aroused by Jess's cry, she had made
an inspection of the machine, with alarming results. What these were
speedily became manifest.

"Jess! The machine is on fire!" she cried afrightedly.

As if in verification of her words there came a puff of flame and a
strong reek of gasoline. It was just then that both girls recalled that
the _Golden Butterfly_ carried twenty-five gallons of gasoline, without
counting the reserve supply.

Fire on an aeroplane is even more terrifying than a similar casualty on
any other type of machine. Hardly had Peggy's words confirming the
alarming news left her lips when there came a cry from Jess.

The girl had just glanced at the barograph. It showed that they were
then 1,500 feet above the surface of the earth. The girl had hardly made
this discovery before, from beneath the "bow" of the monoplane, came a
wave of flame; driven from the steering wheel by the heat, Peggy drew
back toward her companion. Her face was ashen white.

Left to itself the aeroplane "yawed" wildly, like a craft without a
rudder. Then suddenly it dashed down toward the earth, smoke and flames
leaping from its front part.

Both girls uttered a cry of terror as the aircraft fell like a stone
hurled into space. Fas