“All right, just as you say. But there’s no need of you sitting up to wait for me. I may be gone quite a while, because you see Casper would want to hear all the particulars. Go back to your cot, Andy.”
“Perhaps I will,” replied the other, who was, however, evidently in no frame of mind to woo the gentle goddess of sleep, for he continued to shake his head from time to time and mutter words covering his astonishment over the “miracle.”
“Say,” he finally burst forth with, “we are lucky and that’s a fact. Suppose now that pilot of the Monarch had just knocked at the door of the Carberry home instead of here, wouldn’t that have queered us? Well, anyway, he knew a real bird-boy had his nesting place where he saw the roof of our hangar. I’m going to let Mr. DeGraw know some day that I consider him a mighty far-sighted gentleman.”
“Shucks! It was just an accident, pure and simple,” laughed Frank, “and we’ll let it go at that. I’m ready to skip off now. Is your wheel in condition, Andy?”
“Plugged that rear tire only yesterday and made a cracking good job. Yep, she is holding like a house afire. Good luck to you, Frank. And be sure that you spell the whole name out for Casper. I’d hate to see it Byrd or Budd or something like that.”
“You certainly take the cake, Andy. Don’t you know that a bird by any other name would fly just as high? But I’ll impress on Casper the enormous crime he’ll be committing if he gets a single letter wrong. By-by!”
Wheeling the bicycle out of doors, Frank threw himself into the saddle after the manner of an accomplished rider and was off.
The moon still rode high in the clear summer sky, so that, after a fashion, it was almost as light as day. Frank quickly found himself on the road. Then it was an easy dash into town and out along the other road, which would speedily bring him to the home of Casper Dunbar.
Left alone in the shed, Andy did return to his cot, for it was rather cool at that uncanny hour of the night. Sleep, however, was the very last thing he considered as he lay there, a thousand thoughts flying riotously through his excited brain.
The strange passing of that balloon racer, which had covered something like a thousand miles in its long drift across country, filled his mind with awe.