"My only hope now is to get my
brother safely away, and then we will go and live in free America. But,
Tom, I hope I won't put you out by delaying here."

"Not a bit of it. More than half the object of our trip is to rescue
your brother. We must do that first. Now as to details," and they fell
to discussing plans. It was late that night when the Nihilists left the
airship, first having made a careful inspection to see that they were
not spied upon. They promised at once to set to work their secret
methods of getting information.

For several days the airship remained in the vicinity of the Russian
town. Our friends were undisturbed by visitors, as they were in a
forest where the villagers seldom came and the nearest wood-road was
nearly half a mile off.

Every day either Mr. Petrofsky went in to town to see the Nihilists or
some of them came out to the Falcon, usually at night.

"Well, have you any word yet?" asked Tom, after about a week had passed.

"Nothing yet," answered the exile, and his tone was a bit hopeless.
"But we have not given up. All the most likely places have been tried,
but he is not there. We have had traces of him, but they are not fresh
ones. He seems to have been moved from one mine to another. Probably
they feared I would make an attempt to rescue him. But I have not given
up. He is somewhere in Siberia."

"And we'll find him!" cried Tom with enthusiasm.

For three days more they lingered, and then, one night, when they were
just getting ready to retire, there was a knock on the cabin door. Mr.
Petrofsky had been to the village that day, and had received no news.
He had only returned about an hour before.

"Some one's knocking," announced Ned, as if there could be any doubt of
it.

"Bless my burglar alarm!" gasped Mr. Damon.

"I'll see who it is," volunteered Mr. Petrofsky, and Tom looked toward
the rack of loaded rifles, for that day a man, seemingly a wood cutter
had passed close to the airship, and had hurried off as if he had seen
a ghost.

The knock was repeated. It might be their friends, and it might be--

But Mr. Petrofsky solved the riddle by throwing back the portal, and
there stood the Nihilist, Nicolas Androwsky.

"Is there anything the matter?" asked the exile quickly.

"We have news," was the cautious answer, as the Nihilist slipped in,
and closed the door behind him.

"News of my brother?"

"Of your brother! He is in a sulphur mine in the Altai Mountains, near
t