e wants
to be there to see it. I know he'd like to go with us, Tom."

The young inventor made a little gesture of dissent, but as he knew
Mr. Damon, who was very eccentric himself, had taken a great liking
to the gloomy scientist, Tom did not feel like refusing. So he said:

"All right, Mr. Damon. If we go, and I think we shall, we'll expect
you and Mr. Parker. I'll let you know the result of Mr.
Abercrombie's visit, and I needn't request you to keep quiet about
it. If there is a valley of gold in Alaska, we don't want everyone
to know about it."

"No, of course not, Tom Swift. I'll keep silent about it. Bless my
liverpin! But I'll be glad to on the move again, even if it is
toward the Arctic regions."

After some further talk, Tom and Ned took their departure, making
good time back to Shopton in the speedy monoplane.

For several days after that Tom busied himself about his big airship
the RED CLOUD, for it needed quite a few repairs after the long trip
to the mountains where the diamond makers had been discovered in
their cave.

"And if we're going up amid the ice and snow," reasoned Tom, "I've
got to make some different arrangements about the craft, and provide
for keeping warmer than we found necessary when we went west."

So it was that Tom had no time to learn anything further about Andy
Foger's airship, even had our hero been so inclined, which he was
not. He looked for Abe Abercrombie any day now, for though the old
miner had given no date as to when he would arrive, he had said, in
his letter, that it would be soon.

It was one day, nearly a week after Tom's attempt to make Eradicate
like aeroplaning, that there might have been seen, coming along the
Shopton road, which led toward Tom's house, the figure of a grizzled
old man. His clothes were rather rough, and he carried a valise that
had, evidently, seen much service. There was that about him which
proclaimed him for a westerner--a cattleman or a miner.

He walked slowly along, murmuring to himself.

"Wa'al, I might better have taken one of them wagons at th' depot,"
he said, "than t' try t' walk. It's quite a stretch out t' Tom
Swift's house. I hope I find him home."

He trudged on, and, a little later, his gaze was attracted by a
large shed, in the rear of a white house the pretentious appearance
of which indicated that persons of wealth owned it.

"I guess that must be the place," he remarked. "That shed is big
enough to hold the airship. N