"I am going to float around the barn," he said, "and see how the roof looks."
"All right," said Cyrus, keeping on with his work and not turning his head.
To avoid all risk of hitting the sides of the skylight—for he must rise with apparently unexpected suddenness—he stepped outside the building. With a smile and a nod he said to Dr. Alton:
"If you never saw a real angel, Doctor, here's your chance."
As he put his fingers to the button Cyrus came running out. "Stop! Hold on Luther! Let go! That's not adjusted!"
But Luther was not to be thwarted at the high tide of victory—with riches within reach. He put his fingers to the button and said, with a smile:
"Oh, I know how it——"
The sentence was never finished. He had given the slightest turn, having a sensible fear of the unknown force within. In his haste he must have turned it a fraction more than he intended. For then happened the unprecedented thing—the thing without parallel in human life; so awful, so solemn, so unearthly, that the two men who saw it stood dumb in horror.
As he was speaking, with the smile on his lips, he was lifted from the earth by the straps beneath his arms with a violence that stopped his speech—and his breathing. Up he shot, more like a cannon ball than a rocket. So fast he went, gaining speed with every second, growing smaller and fainter to the two spectators, until—and it all happened in the shortest minute—he disappeared, a tiny speck in the blue sky above.