d to its lofty top.

"What a magnificent flagstaff that would make! I'd like to see Old
Glory floating there. Believe I'll suggest it to the magician--that's
what this woodlander is--and doubtless he'll attend to that little
matter! Shades of Aladdin!"

[Illustration: SHE UNROLLED THE STARS AND STRIPES]

Adrian was so startled that he dropped into a chair, the better to
sustain himself against further Arabian-nights-like discoveries.

It was a flagstaff! Somebody was climbing it--Margot! Up, up, like a
squirrel, her blond head appearing first on one side then the other, a
glowing budget strapped to her back.

Adrian gasped. No sailor could have been more fleet or sure-footed. It
seemed but a moment before that slender figure had scaled the topmost
branch and was unrolling the brilliant burden it had borne. The stars
and stripes, of course. Adrian would have been bitterly disappointed
if it had been anything else this agile maiden hoisted from that dizzy
height.

In wild excitement and admiration the watcher leaned out of his
window and shouted hoarsely:

"Hurrah! H-u-r-rah! H-U-R----!"

The cheer died in his throat. Something had happened. Something too
awful to contemplate. Adrian's eyes closed that he might not see. Had
her foot slipped? Had his own cry reached and startled her?

For she was falling--falling! and the end could be but one.

CHAPTER VI

A ONE-SIDED STORY

Adrian was not a gymnast though he had seen and admired many wonderful
feats performed by his own classmates. But he had never beheld a
miracle, and such he believed had been accomplished when, upon
reaching the foot of that terrible tree, he found Margot sitting
beneath it, pale and shaken, but, apparently, unhurt.

She had heard his breathless crashing up the slope and greeted him
with a smile, and the tremulous question:

"How did you know where I was?"

"You aren't--dead?"

"Certainly not. I might have been, though, but God took care."

"Was it my cheers frightened you?"

"Was it you, then? I heard something, different from the wood sounds,
and I looked quick to see. Then my foot slipped and I went down--a
way. I caught a branch just in time and, please, don't tell uncle. I'd
rather do that myself."

"You should never do such a thing. The idea of a girl climbing trees
at all, least of any, such a tree as that!"

He threw his head back and looked upward, through the green spiral to
the brilliant sky. The enormous h