air sleep.

"We must keep up a good pace," cried the governess, taking a stream and
the hedge beyond in a single sweep. "There's a light in the east
already."

As she spoke a dog howled in a farmyard beneath them, and she shot
upwards as though lifted by a sudden gust of wind.

"We're too low," she shouted from above. "That dog felt us near. Come up
higher. It's easier flying, and we've got a long way to go."

Jimbo followed her up till they were several hundred feet above the
earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still
higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and
the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a
tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into
little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, whistling,
tearing through space.

The fields, however, were still dim in the shadows that precede the
dawn, and the stars only just beginning to fade, when they saw the dark
outline of the Empty House below them, and began carefully to descend.
Soon they topped the high elms, startling the rooks into noisy cawing,
and then, skimming the wall, sailed stealthily on outspread wings across
the yard.

Cautiously dropping down to the level of the window, they crawled over
the sill into the dark little room, and folded their wings.

CHAPTER XII

THE FOUR WINDS

The governess left the boy to his own reflections almost immediately. He
spent the hours thinking and resting; going over again in his mind every
incident of the great flight and wondering when the real, final escape
would come, and what it would be like. Thus, between the two states of
excitement he forgot for a while that he was still a prisoner, and the
spell of horror was lifted temporarily from his heart.

The day passed quickly, and when Miss Lake appeared in the evening, she
announced that there could be no flying again that night, and that she
wished instead to give him important instruction for the future. There
were rules, and signs, and times which he must learn carefully. The time
might come when he would have to fly alone, and he must be prepared for
everything.

"And the first thing I have to tell you," she said, exactly as though
it was a schoolroom, "is: _Never fly over the sea._ Our kind of wings
quickly absorb the finer particles of water and get clogged and heavy
over the sea. You finally cannot resist the drawing power of the water,