f the heavy coat with
which she had covered her ski-runner's silken wind-jacket and belted
skiing costume of pure, creamy wool, with its full freedom of
knickerbockers.

"There's Una--Una Grosvenor!" Her face frosted over at the thought. "Oh,
mer-rcy! how I hate her--shall everlastingly hate her--for passing on
that sneer about the Thunder Bird.... And I know-ow her eyelashes aren't
as long as mine now!"

Mingled spice was in the furtive glance which Toandoah's little pal, his
maiden of the chowchow name, threw across the narrow train-aisle at the
delicate young profile opposite, outlined against a crusted window.

"And she still has that funny little near-sighted stand in one of her
dark eyes, too--Una! Although they're pretty eyes--I'll admit that!"
mused the critic further. "Goodness! won't she open them one of these
days when the world is all ringing with talk of Dad and his rocket: when
the Thunder Bird, the finished, full-fledged Thunder Bird, undertakes
its hundred-hour flight to the moon.... For, oh! I know-ow that it will
go, some day--some day." The girl stared passionately now into the
future in the frostscript of the pane near her. "Man would not let it
fail, God _could_ not let it fail--just for lack of funds--however
that third nut may turn out--that third section of a queer will!"

And now the mulled world outside changed again, shading from blood-red
to fairy rose-color as seen through the spectroscope of hope.

She became lost in the most magnificent dream that ever entranced a Camp
Fire Girl yet--with any hope of fulfillment.

Standing of a starless night upon a lofty mountain-top, she was looking
up at Mammy Moon, dear, silver-footed Queen, so near to the heart of
every Earth-daughter!

In the darkness she felt the eyes of the whole world upon her--she but a
satellite reflecting her father's light--its joint ear was bent to catch
the wild, triumphal song-sob of her heart.

And at the words: "Ready! Shoot!", Toandoah's battle-cry, she was
pressing the electric button which, connected with a switch in the
Thunder Bird's tail, would start it off, pointed directly for the moon,
to light up that silver disc with a bright powder-flash visible here on
earth.

She was mesmerized by its wild, red eye. She was watching it switch its
rosy tail feathers, two hundred feet long, that dashing explorer, as,
roaring, it leaped from its mountain platform at incredible speed for an
incredible flight.

She w