uppose, otherwise the golden
egg--the little recording apparatus coming down on the wing of its black
parachute."

The inventor laughed amusedly again, glancing sidelong at _his_
masterpiece, the little five-inch openwork steel box, having in it two
tiny wheels with paper wound, tapelike, on one and a pencil between
them. This carried in the head of the Thunder Bird, big or little, would
keep a record of as high as it went by the pencil automatically making
marks so long as there was any air-pressure, like a guiding hand, to
move it.

"Yes." The weaver nodded. "And here--here is the Will being read!"

The girlish voice was lower now, the girlish feet treading doubtful
ground, as she pointed again to those two quaint, stubby figures, with a
third one reading from a parchment.

But there was no doubt at all in the young voice which presently
gathered itself for a climax.

"And see--see there--those little yellow dots I'm weaving in now; those
are gold pieces, father, the money that _is_ coming to us from
somewhere for you to finish your invention. Yes! and I'm going on to
weave in the moon, too, and the little blue powder-flash before her
face, to show the Thunder Bird has got there. For it is going to get
there, you know!" Pem's blue-star eyes were dim now, but in them was the
wisdom of babes--the wisdom oft hid from the wise and prudent.

"Daddy-man!" She bowed her head over the pearl-woven prophecy, speaking
very low. "I could always tell you my thoughts. Somehow, at that awful
time of the train-wreck, when we were in the icy water, Una and I,
before the boy came, the big boy who saved us, through--through all the
'horripilation', as he called it, I seemed to see a light; the--the
Light of Light Eternal, as we sing--God--and I knew, oh-h! I knew-ew, at
the last, that we weren't going to dr-rown.... I know just as certainly
now that you're going to launch the Thunder Bird, to go-o where
nothing--Earthly--has ever gone before.... Father-r!"

Silence fell upon that passionate little cry in the dim workshop.

Only the beauty of the pearl-woven thing upon the table spoke--the
record to go down to posterity.

Then into the silence tiptoed the voice of a man, whimsical, slightly,
yet with a touch of tender awe in it, too:

"And none knew the Wise Woman who saved the city!"

CHAPTER VI

A HOTSPUR

"Oh! I'm so glad--just so glad I don't know what to do with myself--that
those experiments with the lesser