"A half-mile or more. I must take a look in that direction. I'm a good scout, Mr. Scott, and I'll see what's up. Watch here will you, until I come back? It may be some time."
"All right, but don't get yourself captured, Weber. I'd be mighty lonesome without you."
"Don't fear for me. Of course, as I told you, I'll be gone for some time, and if I may suggest, Mr. Scott, I wouldn't move from among the vines."
"Catch me doing it! I'll say here in my green bower and as my eyes are back in form I'll watch the heavens."
"Good-bye, then, for a while."
Weber slipped away. His tread was so light that he vanished, as if he had melted into air.
"That man would certainly have made a good scout in our old Indian days," thought John, and with the thought came the conviction that Weber was too clever to let himself be caught. Then he turned his attention back to the heavens.
They were now well on into the afternoon, and the sun was at the zenith. A haze of gold shimmered against the vast blue vault. A wind perfumed with grass and green leaves, brought also the ceaseless roar of the guns, and now and then the bitter taste of burned gunpowder. The faint trembling of the earth, or rather of the air just above it, went on, and John, turning about in his little bower, surveyed the heavens from all quarters.
He saw shapes, faint, dark and floating on every horizon, but none of them came near until a full half-hour had elapsed. Then one shot out of the west, sailed toward the northeast, but curving suddenly, came back in the direction of the tree. As the shape grew larger and more defined John's heart began to throb. He had seen many aeroplanes that day, and most of them had been swift and graceful, but none was as swift and graceful as the one that was now coming.
It was a machine, beautiful in shape, and as lithe and fast as the darting swallow. There could be none other like it in the heavens, and his heart throbbed harder. Intuition, perhaps, was back of knowledge and he never for a moment doubted that it was he for whom they had looked so long.