“‘Now!’ says Nate.  ’Now, you long-legged villain, if I don’t give you what’s comin’ to you, then—­Oh, there ain’t no use in your climbin’ out there; you can’t get down.’

“The big barn doors was open, and, in the moonlight, Nate could see Gus scramblin’ up and around on the flyin’ stage where the professor’s aeroplane was perched, lookin’ like some kind of magnified June bug.

“‘Come back, you fool!’ Scudder yelled at him.  ’Come back and be butchered.  You might as well; it’s too high for you to drop.  You won’t?  Then I’ll come after you.’

“Nate says he never shall forget Augustus’s face in the blue light when he see his uncle climbin’ out on that stage after him.  He was simply desperate—­that’s it, desperate.  And the next thing he did was jump into the saddle of the machine and pull the startin’ lever.

“There was the buzz of the electric motor, a slippery, slidin’ sound, one awful hair-raisin’ whoop from Augustus, and then—­’F-s-s-s-t!’—­down the flyin’ stage whizzed that aeroplane and out through the doors.

“Nate set down on the trestles and waited for the sound of the smash.  I guess he actually felt conscience stricken.  Of course, he’d only done his duty, and yet—­

“But no smash came.  Instead, there was a long scream from the kitchen—­Olivia’s voice that was.  And then another yell that for pure joy beat anything ever heard.

“‘It flies!’ screamed Professor Ansel Hobart Whiskers Dixland, from his bedroom window.  ‘At last!  At last!  It flies!’

“It took Nate some few minutes to paw his way back through the shed loft and the ell over the things him and Gus knocked down on the fust lap, until he got to his room where the trouble had started.  Then he went down to the kitchen and outdoor.

“Olivia, a heavenly sort of look on her face, was standin’ in the moonlight, with her hands clasped, lookin’ up at the sky.

“‘It flies!’ says she, in a kind of whisper over and over again.  ’Oh! it flies!’

“Alongside of her was old Dixland, wrapped in a bedquilt, forgettin’ all about sprains and lameness; and he likewise was staring at the sky and sayin’ over and over: 

“‘It flies!  It really flies!’

“And Nate looked up, and there, scootin’ around in circles, now up high and now down low, tippin’ this way and tippin’ that, was that aeroplane.  And in the stillness you could hear the buzz of the motor and the yells of Augustus.

“Down flopped Scudder in the sand.  ‘Great land of love,’ he says, ’it flies!’

“Well, for five minutes or so they watched that thing swoop and duck and sail up there overhead.  And then, slow and easy as a feather in a May breeze, down she flutters and lands soft on a hummock a little ways off.  And that Augustus—­a fool for luck—­staggers out of it safe and sound, and sets down and begins to cry.

“The fust thing to reach him was Olivia.  She grabbed him around the neck, and you never heard such goin’s on as them two had.  Nate come hurryin’ up.