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“Warry!” shrieked Andrew. “Down, lassie—down flat, ere the fiery off-fall hit ye!”

But that “fiery off-fall” dropped a curtain between Una and her visions of the wood. In a delirium she picked up the cup—and fled, not back to the wood, but to the nearest garden hydrant.

A fragment of linen wing, aëroplane wing, treated with the preparation that was so inflammable, swept her cheek—a scarlet butterfly. But she managed to fetch the water, her brief dizziness shriveled, like that doped wing, into a frenzy—red frenzy.

As cool drops fell upon his face, moistened his blistered lips, the boy aviator opened his eyes.

“Gosh! but this is an aw-ful note.” He blinked mockingly at motes of his wings swimming before him in the red glare, at his aëroplane fast being reduced to a blackened motor and a few twisted wires in the tree top. “Aw-ful note!” He grinned.

“Aye, it is—my cock-o’-pluck!” gurgled Andrew.

“‘Pulled a bone,’ up there—a blunder,” went on the freakish voice. “New radio outfit, shoved the power plug into wrong groove, short circuit—wires red-hot in a jiffy—spaghetti all blazing—”