The girl's voice and manner all convinced Carl that there was something very serious the matter. The theft of the air ship would have been bad enough, in itself, but there was a chance that harm had befallen Matt.
Excited and anxious, Carl toiled on along the road, helping the girl and keeping his eyes on the balloon house, just as he had done when he had approached it from the direction of town—only he was even more wildly anxious now than he was then.
[CHAPTER X.]
HELEN BRADY'S CLUE.
Matt remembered the awful moment when he felt his senses leaving him, when the interior of the bare little room swam on his sight and was blotted out in a black mist. After that he could remember nothing until he opened his eyes in the bright sunlight, and saw the strangely familiar face of a girl bending over him.
For a brief space his clearing senses grappled with the situation helplessly; then, as the clear outer air drove from his lungs the poison he had been breathing, his faculties regained their normal condition.
"Helen Brady!" he mumbled, sitting up.
"Yah, you bed you!" whooped Carl, from a little distance away. "Dot vas Helen Prady, Matt, und oof it hatn't peen for her, you und Tick vould haf peen goners. Helen Prady is a pooty fine girl, you bed you. I dake off my hat to her any tay as you can findt in der veek. Miss Prady," and Carl directed his admiring gaze at the girl, "allow me to make some remarks dot you vas a brick—und not a goldt brick, neider. She valked all der vay from Lake Station, Matt, to safe you und Tick!"
Carl was near Ferral, who was likewise sitting up in front of the balloon house, only a little way off.