“Bully for Casper Blue!  He made the riffle too! he’s all to the good!” was the way the impulsive Andy announced his discovery to Frank, who just then could not spare even a second to take his attention off the working of the motor.

After all, it was not so very strange that the boy should express himself in this way.  True, the man he was praising was now a criminal, and they sought to effect his arrest in some manner as yet vague and uncertain; but it was not in this light Andy viewed him just then.  As a birdsman Casper Blue had proved that he still possessed the nerve and skill to direct a daring flight, and that all the tricks known to celebrated fliers were at his finger’s ends.

Any one who has risked his life up among the clouds must always respect such a valiant spirit, even though aware that the object of his admiration has in other ways forfeited the esteem of all honorable men.

There was the biplane moving along on a level keel, and not more than two hundred feet above the water.  And still the course held due north, showing that the desperate men who were thus fleeing from arrest had not the slightest intention of changing their plans.

“What do you think of her now, Andy?” asked the pilot, with a quiver of pride in his voice.

“You must mean our new craft, I take it, Frank; and I want to say that she’s a real peach, if ever there was one.  We never volplaned as easy as that in our lives, and that’s a fact.  Why, it was like sliding downhill on a sled, with never a single bump on the way.  I could do that all day, and never get enough.”

“Dangerous business, all the same,” remarked Frank; “and doubly so when you don’t happen to be well acquainted with your machine.  A single hitch, and we would have struck the water at a terrible rate.”

“But all the same we didn’t, Frank,” the other went on, jubilantly; for now that this peril was of the past Andy could be his old self again.

“And they did just as well,” remarked Frank, always ready to give credit, even though it might be to a rival, for his nature was generous to a fault.

“Well, that biplane was easier to manage than our hydroplane, with the pontoons underneath,” Andy went on to say, grudgingly; for no one could ever convince him that Frank had his superior as an air pilot; and he would sooner go up to a record height of fifteen thousand feet in company with his cousin, than accompany the most famous man living.

“It looks like we might be booked for Canada, Frank,” he went on to say, a minute later, after they had fallen into the new “stride” comfortably, and were rushing forward on a level stretch, with the surface of the lake close at hand.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” came the noncommital reply.

Now, Andy knew his cousin like a book.  Perhaps it was something in the words; or on the other hand there may have been an undercurrent of doubt in the way Frank spoke, that aroused the other’s suspicion.