You darling. We can make it?"

"We must," was the business-like rejoinder. "Roy, you get the Butterfly
out and fill the lubricator tank. We've got enough gasolene."

Roy and Jimsy, arm in arm, hastened off to the shed. The two girls
followed more leisurely. It was not long before everything was in
readiness, but fast as they worked it was nearly half an hour before
preparations were all complete.

Then they climbed in and Peggy started the engine. But the next instant
she shut it off again.

"The second cylinder is missing fire," she pronounced.

Roy bent over the refractory part of the motor and soon had it adjusted.
Then the motor settled down to a steady tune, the regular humming throb
that delights the heart of the aviator.

"All ready?" inquired Peggy, adjusting her hood and goggles and turning
about.

"Right Oh!" hailed Jimsy.

"Now, boys and girls, prepare for a long run," warned Peggy; "with this
load it will take a long time to rise."

The aeroplane was speeded up and soon traversed the slope leading from
the back of the shed to the summit of the little hill at the rear of the
Prescott place. As it topped the rise Peggy turned on full power. The
Golden Butterfly dashed forward and then, after what seemed a long
interval, began to rise. Up it soared, its motor laboring bravely under
its heavy burden. In the dusk blue flames could be seen occasionally
spurting from the exhausts. It would have been a weird, perhaps a
terrifying sight to any one unused to it--the flight of this roaring,
flaming, sky monster, through the evening gloom.

"We've got half an hour to make the twenty miles," shouted Roy, from his
seat beside his sister. Peggy set her little white even teeth and nodded.

"I'm going to make for the tracks and follow them. That's the quickest
way," she said.

It seemed only a few seconds later that the red and green lights of a
semaphore signal flashed up below them.

"Bradley's Crossing," announced Roy.

Swinging the aeroplane about, Peggy began flying directly above the
tracks.

"No sign of the train yet--we may make it," said Jimsy, pulling out his
watch. It showed a quarter to six, and they had fifteen miles to travel,
or so Roy estimated the distance.

"Let her out for a mile-a-minute," he exclaimed.

Peggy only nodded. She was far too busy getting all the work she could
out of the motor. An extra passenger makes a lot of difference to an
aeroplane, and the Butterfly was only buil