n you going up with me."

"Burr-r-r-r!" and Ned pretended to shiver. "I haven't an accident
insurance policy you know."

"You won't need it, Ned. If we get up at all we'll be all right. Catch
hold there, and shift that rear weight a little forward on the rod. I
expect Mr. Damon soon."

The eccentric man came in a little later, just as Tom and Ned had
finished adjusting the mechanism.

"Bless my socks!" cried Mr. Damon. "Do you really mean to go up to-day,
Tom?"

"I sure do! Why, aren't you going with me?" and Tom winked at Ned.

"Bless my--" began Mr. Damon, and then, evidently realizing that he was
being tested he exclaimed: "Well, I will go, Tom! If the air glider is
any good it ought to hold me. I will go up."

"Now, Ned, how about you?" asked the young inventor.

"Well, I guess it's up to me to come along, but I sure do wish it was
over with," and Ned glanced out of the window to see if the gale was
dying out. But the wind was as high as ever.

It was hard work getting the air glider out of the shed, and in
position on top of a hill, about a quarter of a mile away, for Tom
intended "taking off" from the mound, as he could not get a running
start without a motor. The wind, however, he hoped, would raise him and
the strange craft.

In order to get it over the ground without having it capsize, or
elevate before they were ready for it, drag ropes, attached to bags of
sand were used, and once these were attached the four found that they
could not wheel the air glider along on its bicycle wheels.

"We'll have to get Eradicate and his mule, I guess," said Tom, after a
vain endeavor to make progress against the wind. "When it's up in the
air it will be all right, but until then I'll need help to move it.
Ned, call Rad, will you?"

The colored man, with Boomerang, his faithful mule, was soon on hand.
The animal was hitched to the glider, and pulled it toward the hill.

"Now to see what happens," remarked Tom as he wheeled his latest
invention around where the wind would take it as soon as the
restraining ropes were cast off, for it was now held in place by
several heavy cables fastened to stakes driven in the ground.

Tom gave a last careful look to the weights, planes and rudders. He
glanced at a small anemometer or wind gage, on the craft, and noted
that it registered sixty miles an hour.

"That ought to do," he remarked. "Now who's going up with me? Will you
take a chance, Mr. Petrofsky?"

"I'd rather