reassured by
Roy's quiet manner of breaking the news to her, and promised to come over
herself at once. By this time Doctor Mays was ready, and the young people
noted, not without amusement, that under his assumed air of confidence
the benevolent old gentleman was not a little worried at the idea of
braving what was to him a new element.

The Golden Butterfly was equipped with a small extension seat at the
stern of her chassis, and into this Roy dropped after it had been pulled
out. Dr. Mays was seated in the centre, as being the heaviest of the
party, while Peggy resumed her place at the steering and driving
apparatus.

"All ready behind?" she called out, laughingly, as they settled down.

"All right here, my dear," responded the doctor with an inward conviction
that all was wrong.

"Go ahead, sis," cried Roy. "Hold tight, doctor, to those straps on the
side."

With a roar and a whirring thunder of its exhausts the motor was started
up. Dr. Mays paled, but, as Roy afterward expressed it, "he was dead
game." Forward shot the aeroplane across the hitherto peaceful pasture
lot which was now turned into a crazy circus of terrified animals.

"Wh-wh-when are we going up?"

The doctor asked the question rather jerkily as the aeroplane sped over
the uneven ground, jolting, and jouncing tremendously despite its
chilled-steel spiral springs.

"In a moment," explained Roy; "the extra weight makes her slower in
rising than usual."

"Look out, child!" yelled the doctor, suddenly, "you'll crash into the
fence."

He half rose, but Roy pulled him back.

"It's all right, doctor," he said reassuringly.

But to the physician it seemed far otherwise. The fence he had alluded
to, a tall, five-barred, white-washed affair, loomed right up in front of
them. It seemed as if the aeroplane, scudding over the ground like a
scared jackrabbit, must crash into it.

But no such thing happened.

As the 'plane neared the obstruction something seemed to impel it upward.
Peggy pulled a lever and twisted a valve, and the motor, beating like a
fevered pulse, answered with an angry roar.

The Golden Butterfly rose gracefully, just grazing the fence top, like a
jumping horse. But, unlike the latter, it did not come down upon the
other side. Instead, it soared upward in a steady gradient.

The doctor, his first alarm over, gazed about him with wonder, and
perhaps a bit of awe. Many times had he and his dead friend, Mr.
Prescott, talked