th a scarf of black and gold. Billy, Pete, and Frank joined
them, each fluttering a brilliant silk gonfalon.

The girls drew away in alarm at first. Then they drew together for
counsel. All the time the men stood quiet, waving their delicately
hued spoils. One by one--Clara first, then Chiquita, Lulu, Peachy,
Julia--they succumbed; they sank slowly. Even then they floated for a
long while, visibly swinging between the desire for possession and the
instinct of caution. But in the end each one of them took from her mate
the scarf he held up to her. Followed the prettiest exhibition of flying
that Angel Island had yet seen. The girls fastened the long gauzes to
their heads and shoulders. They flicked and flitted and flittered, they
danced and pirouetted and spun through the air, trailing what in the
aqueous moonlight looked like mist, irradiated, star-sown.

"Well," said Ralph that night after the girls had vanished, "I don't see
that this business of handing out loot is getting us anywhere. We can
keep this up until we've given those harpies every blessed thing in the
trunks. Then where are we? They'll have everything we have to give, and
we'll be no nearer acquainted. We've got to do something else."

"If we could only get them down to earth--if we could only accustom them
to walking about," Honey declared, "I'm sure we could rig up some kind
of trap."

"But you can't get them to do that," Billy said. "And the answer's
obvious. They can't walk. You see how tiny, and useless-looking their
feet are. They're no good to them, because they've never used them. It
never occurs to them apparently even to try to walk."

"Well, who would walk if he could fly?" demanded Pete pugnaciously.

"Well said, son," agreed Ralph, "but what are we going to do about it?"

"I'll tell you what we can do about it," said Frank quietly, "if you'll
listen to me." The others turned to him. Their faces expressed varying
emotions--surprise, doubt, incredulity, a great deal of amusement. But
they waited courteously.

"The trouble has been heretofore," Frank went on in his best academic
manner, "that you've gone at this problem in too obvious a way. You've
appealed to only one motive--acquisitiveness. There's a stronger one
than that--curiosity."

The look of politely veiled amusement on the four faces began to give
way to credulity. "But how, Frank?" asked Billy.

"I'll show you how," said Frank. "I've been thinking it out by myself
for over