"I will go fetch him," replied Crane, and turned to the stairs.

He returned shortly, with the news of the flight of the captive.

"Hm ... he must have made himself a parachute. I didn't think even he would tackle a sixty-thousand-foot drop. I'll tell the world that he sure has established a record. I can't say I'm sorry that he got away, though. We can get him again any time we want him, anyway, as that little object-compass in my drawer is still looking right at him," said Seaton.

"I think he earned his liberty," declared Dorothy, stoutly, and Margaret added:

"He deserves to be shot, but I'm glad he's gone. He gives me the shivers."

At the end of the calculated time they saw the lights of a large city beneath them, and Crane's fingers clenched upon Seaton's arm as he pointed downward. There were the landing-lights of Crane Field, seven peculiarly-arranged searchlights throwing their mighty beams upward into the night.

"Nine weeks, Dick," he said, unsteadily, "and Shiro would have kept them burning nine years if necessary."

The Skylark dropped easily to the ground in front of the testing shed and the wanderers leaped out, to be greeted by the half-hysterical Jap.

Shiro's ready vocabulary of peculiar but sonorous words failed him completely, and he bent himself double in a bow, his yellow face wreathed in the widest possible smile. Crane, one arm around his wife, seized Shiro's hand and wrung it in silence. Seaton swept Dorothy off her feet, pressing her slender form against his powerful body. Her arms tightened about his neck as they kissed each other fervently and he whispered in her ear:

"Sweetheart wife, isn't it great to be back on our good old Earth again?"

THE END