mountain gusts--had to be acquitted
too.

For at the first dawn after the blighted
experiment some thin silk rags of a raven
parachute were found clinging, soot-like,
to bushes in the spruce wood, together
with a portion of a twisted and bent wire
frame.

There was not a trace of the diary, the
golden egg, the little perforated steel box,
with the recording pencil and paper in
it. Deprived of its wing, that could not
have gone on alone,--without some hand
carrying it.

So the weary and despondent searchers
were forced to accept Andrew's assertion
that "mon or deil" had robbed them;
and it was plain from the solemn shake
of the "true-penny's" gray head in its
up-to-date chauffeur's cap that he, himself,
was disposed to lay the blame on a
"deev."

"It's plain to me, noo, that this auld
Earth should bide where she belangs,"
[[246]]

p245 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p246w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p247

v?