s--the world would call him a fool's mate.... If it did!" Pem's
teeth were clinched. "But, of course, without the record, there would be
nothing to show how high the little rocket had really flown--showing the
bigger one the road," with an excited gasp.

"Yes, I can understand how anxious he must be about the safe return of
the egg--or the log--whichever you choose to call it--the first record
from space, anyway." Tanpa's tone was almost equally excited. "And of
course the wind may play pranks with the parachute--drift it away down
the mountainside!"

"So that we'd lose it in the darkness--oh-h!" Pem shivered upon the
thought. "But we'll all be on the lookout to prevent that, as many of us
as are there--and that won't be more than a picked few, Dad says, to
witness this first experiment.... When--when the real Thunder Bird
flies, though--" she turned those patchwork eyes now, sky-blue,
flame-red, upon her companions--"you'll all--all-ll be there. And, oh!
won't it--won't it be a sight to watch--it--tear?"

Drooping towards the fire-glow, lips parted in entranced assurance, the
slight figure became lost in the same dream which had held it months
before in a February Pullman, while a daring flame, like a red-capped
pearl diver, plunging into the mystery of that fairy thing, that
gleaming stole about her neck brought out milky flashes of
luster--together with those New Jerusalem tints, jade and gold and ruby.

Finished now it was, the pearl-woven prophecy--fair record to go down to
posterity!

In faith--such faith as had inspired Penelope, faithful wife, of old, to
weave and unravel her endless web, steadfast in the belief of her
husband's return, so the girlish fingers upon the loom had wrought the
transcendent story to a finish.

To a finish even to the sprinkling of gold pieces, the yellow bonanza,
coming from somewhere, to gorge the Thunder Bird, for its record flight;
to a finish even to the celestial climax, the little blue powder-flash
lighting up the dear, fair face of Mammy Moon!

But of one climax, more celestial still, Pemrose Lorry could not speak,
not even to these her Camp Fire Sisters: of the evening of the second
wreck--the wreck of hope after that third installment of a disappointing
will had been read--when she had taken the four feet and a half of pearl
poem to her father's workshop, the grim hardware laboratory, and out of
the home of light, which she herself hardly understood, in her young,
you