BY WEBB DONNELL.
"Not back yet, Ned?" The tone hardly indicated that Mrs. Sinclair expected an affirmative answer. The disappointed look on Ned's face told its own woful tale.
"No, mother," said Ned, looking out of the window upon the valley sloping to the Hudson, a quarter of a mile away. "No, he isn't back yet, and I've given up all hope that he ever will come back."
Ned drummed dismally on the window-pane before he went on. "If Helen 'tossed' Fleetwing a hundred miles out at sea, the pigeon would have been here before dark that day, for the steamer sailed at noon."
"Yes, one would think so," assented Mrs. Sinclair.
"Now it's the third day," went on the boy at the window, disconsolately. "Helen either forgot to set the bird free until the steamer was too far out for him to be able to fly back, or Fleetwing has been shot by a pot-hunter. When can we hear from Helen, mother?"
"Well, the steamer is due at Queenstown next Friday," said Mrs. Sinclair, "Then it will be six or seven days before her letter can get back to us. I guess we will have to wait ten days longer, Neddie; but I'm just as sorry as I can be about Fleetwing, dear."
"Yes, mother," said Ned, brightening at the sympathy.
"And we'll hope for the best," went on Mrs. Sinclair. "You know, homing-pigeons have returned to their lofts after weeks of absence. We won't give up Fleetwing till we hear from Helen, anyway."
"I know that some homers are out a long time from the loft and then get back all right," said Ned, "but Fleetwing always attends strictly to business. You know, he came straight home from the World's Fair flight from Chicago, more than a thousand miles."