"Come on, let's," exclaimed the latter suddenly, catching Mary's arm. "Oh, no, I don't want to," exclaimed Mary, shrinking back.

"It won't hurt. Come on. It'll be fun," said Augusta. She was of quite a different spirit from her friend and was always a leader. The idea of rising a score of feet from the earth under a balloon seemed to have appealed to her as very amusing. But Mary held back. "Oh, come on, honey. Such a chance!" cried Augusta, starting forward and pulling at her chum's hand. "Don't spoil the fun. I want to go."

Probably no other argument could have had quite such weight with Mary Courtney as this last. She was accustomed to follow Augusta's lead in little things, to do things that Augusta wanted to do, not infrequently, too, influenced only by the fact that Augusta wanted to do them when she herself did not in the least. Such a habit, springing from a complex desire to please her friend, to do the things others did, and not to be a spoil-sport, is strong. Besides, the impulse to accept what was virtually a dare from. Harry Pendleton, was not absent. Mary hesitated.

The crowd laughed again. Augusta stopped pulling at her friend's hand and put an arm about her.

"Why, come on," she whispered in Mary's ear. "It'll be over in a minute, and more fun! Goodness! Don't be so afraid!"

And then, suddenly, it didn't seem such a great or dangerous thing after all, just to take a little ride up a few feet on that substantial looking framework. Why, it was really only like swinging in an old-fashioned swing, and-and

She felt herself walking forward and knew that, despite her qualms, she was laughing excitedly. An instant's impulse to draw back after starting was quelled by quick pride and then everything else followed so quickly that she scarcely thought at all.

It seemed a strange thing to Mary, when she considered it afterward, that such a terrible adventure as hers could start in such a simple way. It seemed strange to her father and mother and to others who were not there that no one among the many friends and neighbors in the crowd should have interfered and put a stop to a rather madcap proceeding. But perhaps the very fact that among those who looked on and laughed were so many friends and neighbors of the girls and their parents, explains it. Certainly no one did interfere, and doubtless

EACH OTHER'S HANDS."

it would never have occurred to anyone that interference was called for, had everything happened as was planned. What one ought to have thought of is often painfully clear after the opportunity of preventing a foolish act or a possible calamity has passed. But it is not always so clear when the course events are to take is hidden behind the curtain which divides this present minute from the next.

And so, under the direction of Pendleton and amid considerable general amusement, the two girls were seated in the car of the balloon, which consisted of a skeleton-like frame-work hung below the big bag, with cross-bars only, like a trapeze, for seats, from which its motor and steering apparatus were easily within reach. Each took a firm hold with one hand of one of the bars at the side, which would support them, and gripped the seat-bar with the other. There was no perceptible breeze and the balloon seemed to rest with reasonable quiet in her stout leashes, which consisted of two strong ropes, one wound round a stake at one side and the other entrusted for holding to half a dozen volunteers. It was just fun for everybody, and everybody was interested.

Harry gave the word to allow the balloon to rise. If he felt any misgiving at the last moment, he did not show it. He himself directed the volunteers who paid out their rope from near the fence of the race-track, while an assistant of his loosed the knot on the other line and allowed the heavy cable to slip slowly in coils around the stake. Everything seemed to move smoothly, evenly, safely. The balloon rose slowly to the length of the car-ropes and lifted its burden gently and easily just off the ground.

"Not more than twenty feet, now," said Pendleton, who was full of official activity and who was probably then enjoying his entertainment quite as much as any spectator. And then, almost as he spoke, the thing occurred that turned his jest into terrible earnest.

It happened that Judge Holcombe's horse, a wild young colt, had been tied to the race-track fence with his head turned away from the balloon. He had made some show of fright when the balloon first began to fill, but he had seemingly

grown used to as much of the big shadow-like object as he could see past his blinders, and people had forgotten him. But when the great brown bag suddenly lifted and swayed tremulously like a huge thing alive in mid-air, it was too much for the timid animal's nerves, and it was quite without warning that he became a factor in the situation. He jumped and snorted, stood trembling an instant, and then, as a man nearby made an unwise rush for the bridle, he backed madly, tugging at his halter. An instant the strap held, then it snapped. There was a wild stamping of hoofs on the sod, a sharp shriek of a tire against an iron shoe on the carriage-body as the wheel doubled under, then a crash, as the vehicle overturned, and the horse, now fairly crazy with fright, turned and plunged down the line of the fence directly upon the group of men who held Harry's rope.

A wild yell went up from the crowd. Instantly aware of their danger two of the men at the rope dropped it and ran. The rest tried to retain their hold and escape from the path of the runaway. One of them fell and dragged the rope out of the hands of a companion, and another feeling himself suddenly lifted from the ground by the tugging balloon, let go his hold with a frightened cry. The rope slipped and dragged, then jerked from the hands of the others and whipped across the open space like a big snake. The whole lifting power of the balloon, thus thrown upon the other rope, pulled it with such vicious suddenness, that the hands of Harry's assistant, who clung desperately to it, were drawn down to the stake and cruelly burned and lacerated, and next moment slipped helpless from their hold.

At the first cry of alarm, Augusta Grace, perhaps because she was quicker of wit than Mary, perhaps only because her nerves were strung to a higher tension, jumped from the seat-bar to the ground, a distance of less than six feet at the moment, and screamed to her chum to follow. But Mary, not fully understanding, clung for an instant to her place, hesitating, and in that instant her only opportunity to escape from her fearful predicament was gone.

To the girl, sitting on the trapeze-like

bar and clinging to the rod at her side, there came no sense of motion as she was lifted up with the swift leap of the liberated balloon. To her unaccustomed senses, an astounding phenomenon presented itself. The crowd, the fences, the buildings, the track, the earth itself seemed suddenly to sink away beneath her as if they were dropping into some suddenly opened abyss and leaving her alone and unsupported in infinite space. There was no instant sense of dizziness, no impulse to jump, no real fright, just in that first moment when the chance to jump with safety slipped away. There was only wonder and amazement.

The fright came afterwards. A period about which she was unable to remember anything when later she tried to recall her sensations in their sequence, passed over her. Certain photographic impressions of that strange scene below her lived afterwards in her brain as bits impossible to forget but unconsciously registered. The sudden flattening of objects all about, the white upturned faces, the confusion and dust where the runaway horse came quickly to grief at a corner of the fence, the sprawling figure of Harry Pendleton, who made one desperate effort to catch a dangling cable, and fell in a heap-these were things she saw like the flashing pictures of the kinodrome.

When she came to a state of conscious and connected thought, her terror was less than she would have believed possible. Indeed, almost the first clear idea she had was realization that she was curiously unfrightened. If this were a state of the nerves in revulsion from extreme horror which had first benumbed her, she did not understand it. Of course, she was alarmed. Sometimes, at first, there were minutes when terror swept over and through her like a sense of nausea, but these were succeeded by a strange steadiness that saved her from losing consciousness and kept her fingers gripped upon the side-rod of the car. Once a sudden exhilaration came upon her after a thrill of fear, and once again a terrible sickening belief that she was about to fall all but took possession of her. This was the most awful moment of all, and came after she had leaned forward farther than before and looked

directly downward from the car. It was like nothing she had ever known before, that awful sense of being unsupported at a fearful height, nothing, nothing, nothing solid or tangible about her. It was a complete severance from all her life's habits of mind and body, and for a moment instinct itself was at a loss, and reason alone dictated the fast hold she kept upon her frail perch. After that she dared not think of the possibility of falling, and fought its persistent rising determinedly.

And all this time she saw things sinking, sinking away beneath. She saw the upturned faces blur and fade, the wide crowd shrink to a cluster of flat, dark spots and then to one indistinct blot. She saw the buildings dwindle, as if melting. The broad fields closed down to little squares, the river became a winding gray streamlet between its shrinking banks, and wood and road, meadow and hill drew together till the whole looked like a toy landscape. The beauty of it all did not escape her as her brain cleared. There was the town with its gay and red and brown roofs sunk among the trees like so many bits of colored wood or stone in a miniature moss-bank. were the dusty country roads stretching away, much more crooked than she had ever supposed they were, and themselves. looking almost like streamlets of strange, unfamiliar course. There was the town of Smithfield, four miles from Three Pines, appearing but a step away. There was the railroad and a noiseless, crawling train, which worked itself in and out through the patches of woods, catching here and there the gilding rays of the declining sun, and changing color in the alternate light and shadow like a tiny glow-worm on a huge green leaf.

There

It is not to be supposed that Mary thought all these things out in the detail that telling them requires. They came like the other impressions in the flashes of thought that stamped unfading images upon her mind to be considered afterwards. She was sometimes conscious of cool draughts of air, sometimes of a breathless quiet. She early felt the growing stillness which enhanced the sense of complete isolation. She did not realize for some time after reaching a considerable altitude that the balloon was

drifting off to the west, and only understood it after a first frightened idea that the earth was turning slowly away from her to the east.

It was a sense of cold that first aroused the girl from the half-dazed condition in which the shock of her sudden danger had plunged her. Mary understood quite well what it meant. It meant that the altitude reached by the balloon was already great. It was utterly impossible to judge how high she had risen or how far away the earth now was. That the distance was probably greater than it looked, she knew, for she was conscious now that time had been passing swiftly during her upward flight. The wide expanse of territory over which she could see looked strangely, monotonously flat and featureless, except for color. In the late rays of the afternoon sun there was plenty of rich color everywhere. Far off to the east a gray expanse that looked like a mist she suddenly knew to be Lake Huron, twenty miles away.

It seemed easier to look down, so long as she did not lean forward, than to look up. Contrary to all her preconceived ideas, there was no feeling of dizziness and no insane desire to jump. Her seat upon the bar was not comfortable, but it was long before she thought of it, and when she did, she discovered that she could change position without danger of losing her hold.

How all the time passed it was difficult for her to think afterwards. She thought a great deal about home, of the loved ones and of their anxiety for her, and of Harry. She was sorry for Harry, even then, and remembered that, too, afterward. She wondered at the strange chance that had brought her into this plight and tried to think what the end of it all might be. She watched, while minutes slipped into half-hours, trying to judge whether the balloon was rising, falling or only floating away to the west. Through other seemingly endless periods. she strained every sense to catch sound from any source, and the awe that came upon her with an idea of the vastness, the boundlessness of this region of the air into which she had come, an involuntary navigator, almost stilled her very breath.

Once for a long space she was sur

rounded by a white mist that she knew must be some low hanging cloud, and, while it covered her, it veiled the earth utterly from her sight. The intense loneliness of this time, quite apart from any connection with the danger of her situation was terrible. While she drifted in and above this cloud she felt that she was cut off from everything she had ever known and had entered a different world.

When thoughts of the future began crowding in among all these other strange thoughts, fear had another long period of something close to mastery. More than one breathless, involuntary prayer was framed unconsciously by her lips. But as time passed, slowly increasing confidence in the substantial nature of her support for the present gave her the first thrills of hope and with them came more active thought. She had no idea how long she had been sitting, simply feeling the long series of strange sensations, unreasoning, unexpectant, but fatigue in her limbs and hands and back made itself felt eventually, and aided in spurring thought.

She looked up at the great cloud of silk above her with its diamond net-work of cords encompassing it, and tried to follow the lines of the converging ropes which suspended the car support directly above her. She studied Harry's complicated motor, but dared not touch it. She watched the convulsive whipping about of the loose hanging neck of the great balloon. Its movements seemed like sudden kicks of half suppressed energy. It suggested consideration of the balloon's power and of the length of time it could remain afloat. And then suddenly the definite idea of escape from her perilous position took form from some half-forgotten thing she had heard or read, as her eyes fastened on a hanging cord which fell from somewhere far above her and was loosely tied just above her hand upon the side-bar of the car.

It must be,-yes, it must be the gascord the cord by which the vent in the balloon was controlled.

After that the flame of hope rose high. Something to do that was the helpful, saving thing. saving thing. With cautious effort she reached the cord, drew it down and pulled it slowly and carefully. It yielded. A strange, uncertain, unlocated sound