wants to. What do
you want to go interfering for?"

Roland returned. The negotiations with the bird-man had lasted a little
longer than one would have expected. But then, of course, M. Feriaud was
a foreigner, and Roland's French was not fluent.

He took Muriel's hand.

"Good-by," he said.

He shook hands with the rest of the party, even with Albert Potter. It
struck Frank that he was making too much fuss over a trifle--and, worse,
delaying the start of the proceedings.

"What's it all about?" he demanded. "You go on as if we were never going
to see you again."

"You never know."

"It's as safe as being in bed."

"But still, in case we never meet again----"

"Oh, well," said Brother Frank, and took the outstretched hand.

* * * * *

The little party stood and watched as the aeroplane moved swiftly along
the ground, rose, and soared into the air. Higher and higher it rose,
till the features of the two occupants were almost invisible.

"Now," said Brother Frank. "Now watch. Now he's going to loop the loop."

But the wheels of the aeroplane still pointed to the ground. It grew
smaller and smaller. It was a mere speck.

"What the dickens?"

Far away to the West something showed up against the blue of the
sky--something that might have been a bird, a toy kite, or an aeroplane
traveling rapidly into the sunset.

Four pairs of eyes followed it in rapt silence.

THE EPISODE OF THE FINANCIAL NAPOLEON

Second of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial
Review_, June 1916]

Seated with his wife at breakfast on the veranda which overlooked the
rolling lawns and leafy woods of his charming Sussex home, Geoffrey
Windlebird, the great financier, was enjoying the morning sun to the
full. His chubby features were relaxed in a smile of lazy contentment;
and his wife, who liked to act sometimes as his secretary, found it
difficult to get him to pay any attention to his morning's mail.

"There's a column in to-day's _Financial Argus_," she said, "of which
you really must take notice. It's most abusive. It's about the Wildcat
Reef. They assert that there never was any gold in the mine, and that
you knew it when you floated the company."

"They will have their little joke."

"But you had the usual mining-expert's report."

"Of course we had. And a capital report it was. I remember thinking at
the time what a neat turn of phrase the fellow had. I admit he de