alted on the
shore, he was greatly excited.

There was an aeroplane upon the water and in the aeroplane a tall young
man with considerable length of sinewy limb, lazily rolling a
cigarette. Diane unconsciously approved the clear bronze of his lean,
burned face and his eyes, blue, steady, calm as the waters of the lake
he rode.

The aviator met her astonished glance with one of laughing deference
even as she marveled at his genial air of staunch philosophy.

"I beg your pardon," stammered Diane, "but--but are you by any chance
waiting--to be rescued?"

"Why--I--I believe I am!" exclaimed the young man readily, apparently
greatly pleased at her common sense. "At your convenience, of course!"

"Are you--er--sinking or merely there?"

"Merely here!" nodded the young man with a charming smile of
reassurance. "This contraption is a--er--I--I think Dick calls it an
hydro-aeroplane. It has pontoons and things growing all over it for
duck stunts and if the water wasn't so infernally still, I'd be
floating and smoking and likely in time I'd make shore. That's a
delightful pastime for you now," he added with a lazy smile of the
utmost good humor, "to float and smoke on a summer day and grab at the
shore."

"I was under the impression," commented Diane critically, "that in an
hydro-aeroplane one could rise from the water like a bird. I've read
so recently."

"One can," smiled the shipwrecked philosopher readily, "provided his
motor isn't deaf and dumb and insanely indifferent to suggestion. When
it grows shy and silent, one swims eventually and drips home, unless a
dog barks and a rescuer emerges from the trees equipped with sympathy
and common sense. I've a mechanician back there," he added sociably.
"He--he's in a tree, I think. I--er--mislaid him in a very dangerous
air current."

"Are you aware," inquired the girl, biting her lip, "that you're
trespassing?"

"Lord, no!" exclaimed the aviator. "You don't mean it. Have you by
any chance a reputable rope anywhere about you?"

"No," said Diane maliciously, "I haven't. As a rule, I do go about
equipped with ropes and hooks and things to--rescue trespassing
hydroaviators, but--" she regarded him thoughtfully. "Do you like to
float about and smoke?"

The sun-browned skin of the young aviator reddened a trifle, but his
eyes laughed.

"I'm an incurable optimist," he lightly countered, "or I wouldn't have
tried to fly over a private lake in a borrowed aero