"This is none of your business!"

"Hold him a minute, Ben!" suddenly shouted Leo. "Hold him!"

As the boy spoke he drew from his pocket a clasp-knife.

Quickly he opened the largest blade.

Slash! slash! slash!

He was cutting the ropes which held the balloon.

"Here! What are you doing!" screamed the man in charge.

"I'm going to escape a tyrant!" responded Leo, as he cut the last rope.

For an instant the balloon continued to sway from side to side.

Daniel Hawkins fought off Ben Barkley and leaped forward.

Too late!

Up shot the balloon, dragging the basket after it.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Leo Dunbar was five hundred feet up in the air!

CHAPTER VIII.-AMONG THE CLOUDS IN A THUNDERSTORM.

A cry arose.

"The balloon has gone up!"

"Why, the balloonist is nothing but a boy!"

"My! but ain't it going up fast!"

Daniel Hawkins could do nothing but stare after the balloon.

"Foolish boy, he will be killed!" he gasped.

Ben Barkley was also amazed.

"He said he would go up," he murmured, "but I never supposed that he meant it."

The crowd continued to shout. They wondered what it all meant, and some asked the men who had had the balloon in charge, but those individuals had no time to explain.

They sprang into a wagon and prepared to follow the direction of the balloon, supposing it would come down as soon as the hot air began to cool off.

Meanwhile, what of Leo?

So sudden was the upward rush of the balloon that the boy was thrown to the bottom of the basket ere he was aware.

He clutched the sides and then ventured to look down. The earth seemed to be fading away beneath him.

For a few minutes he was deadly sick at the stomach and there was a strange ringing in his ears.

The balloon was moving in the direction of Hopsville. Soon it pa.s.sed over the town.

Leo could see the few streets and the brook laid out like a map beneath him.

He was growing accustomed to his novel situation.

On and on went the balloon.

The wind appeared to blow stronger the higher he went.

Then he looked ahead and saw he was rushing rapidly toward a dense ma.s.s of clouds to the southeast.

The boy had noticed the clouds while running toward Lendham.

They betokened a thunderstorm, and already the mutterings of thunder came to his ears.

"A storm would be more than I bargained for," he thought. "I wonder if I can't get away from it?"

Leo had heard tell of going up above a storm when the latter hung low.

He did not know if he could make a hot-air balloon go up, but he resolved to try.

With great rapidity he threw out one sandbag after another.

Lightened of a great part of its load, the balloon shot up a hundred feet or more.

Then the boy noticed a large sponge tied to the side of the basket and beside a can labeled alcohol.

At once he saturated the sponge and placed it on the stick for that purpose.

When the sponge was lit he held it up to the mouth of the balloon.

The cooling air began to grow hot again, and once more the balloon went up slowly, but steadily.

But now the wind made the basket rock violently from side to side.

Soon Leo had to extinguish the sponge and put it away.

A gust sent the basket almost over to one side, and he had to let everything go in order to cling fast.