Snap tried to argue with the old man, but it was useless. Reason against prejudice never had much chance. Dick never had been a 'blooming balloonatic,' he said, and didn't 'kinder cotton to becoming one now.'

'Well, Dick,' said Snap, 'it's just this. If we stay here it means death—a long, lingering, painful death. If we try the balloon, of course it may drop us like a stone, and then that's death too, but a quick, painless one. We should be dead before we got to the bottom.'

'That's right enough, lad,' persisted Wharton, 'but if that is all that you are hankering after who is to hinder your jumping over the edge here—that's death too, a pretty certain one, and painless, says you!'

'Quite so, Dick, but I don't think the balloon would let us down. Why should it? There is a lot of ballast in. We'll throw that out, and then away we go sailing over the heads of these Redskins until somewhere or other we come softly and slowly down again, safe and sound, and out of danger. I can't think why we have stayed here so long,' Snap concluded, having succeeded, as many a man has done before, in talking himself into belief in his own scheme.

'I'm not a-goin' to say, Snap,' said Dick slowly, 'as there ain't something in your idea; but sailing in that thing don't seem natural to me somehow. Howsomdever, if we can't get away before this time to-morrow in any other way, you boys can try it if you like, and I'll jest try to wriggle through them reptiles down below in my own way.'

And that was the most the boys could get out of Dick, and with it they had to be content: though Snap had not the least intention of going without the old man. 'All or none' was his motto, and he meant to stick to it.

CHAPTER XXIV
SNAP'S SACRIFICE

That night Snap slept little. Whenever he closed his eyes visions of Fairbury floated before them, and of that kind, sweet face, with eyes shining through their tears—the one face which had always had a smile for him, which was always ready to confront those who said 'That young Hales is a thorough ne'er-do-weel, he'll never be good for anything, mark my words.' She had always believed in him; had always trusted her boys with him, though the neighbours shook their heads and thought, as one old lady said, 'that those dear lambs would never come to any good with that boy, always fighting and disgracing himself.' And then, when the expulsion from Fernhall had thrown his guardian into a white heat of virtuous indignation, and even dear old Admiral Chris had looked askance, it was the same little woman who had drawn out the whole story, had tried to look serious over it, and finally re-told it to her brother in such a way that that old warrior had forgotten his gout and roared with laughter till it sounded as if a gale was blowing.

Always Mrs. Winthrop. Whenever he opened his eyes there was the great white balloon quivering and poising in the moonlight; and whenever he closed them there was the face of the woman who had been more than a mother to him, who had put every good thought into his mind, and helped him, ever since he could remember, to grow up a gentleman. And round him lay her sons, and in his heart he knew that next to God she trusted him for their safety.