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“Are you absolutely sure that nothing can be done?” persisted Mrs. Windlebird. “Have you tried every one?”

“Every one, dear moon-of-my-delight–the probables, the possibles, the highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel’s wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time. Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from the clouds.”

As he spoke, an aeroplane came sailing over the tops of the trees beyond the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not twenty yards from where he was seated.

* * * * *

Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin’s brother Frank.

So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr. Windlebird’s approach until that pleasant, portly man’s shadow fell on the turf before him.

“Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?”

Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird, keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards’ walk from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of the more salient points in Roland’s history. It was when Mr. Windlebird heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up and took notice.

“Lead me to him,” he said simply.

Roland sneezed.

“Doe accident, thag you,” he replied miserably. “Somethig’s gone wrong with the worgs, but it’s nothing serious, worse luck.”

M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose to his feet, and bowed.

“Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespass. See, mon ami,” he said radiantly to Roland, “all now O. K. We go on.”

“No,” said Roland decidedly.

“No? What you mean–no?”

A shade of alarm fell on M. Feriaud’s weather-beaten features. The eminent bird-man did not wish to part from Roland. Toward Roland he felt like a brother, for Roland had notions about payment for little aeroplane rides which bordered upon the princely.

“But you say–take me to France with you—-“

“I know. But it’s all off. I’m not feeling well.”

“But it’s all wrong.” M. Feriaud gesticulated to drive home his point. “You give me one hundred pounds to take you away from Lexingham. Good. It is here.” He slapped his breast pocket. “But the other two hundred pounds which also you promise me to pay me when I place you safe in France, where is that, my friend?”

“I will give you two hundred and fifty,” said Roland earnestly, “to leave me here, and go right away, and never let me see your beastly machine again.”

A smile of brotherly forgiveness lit up M. Feriaud’s face. The generous Gallic nature asserted itself. He held out his arms affectionately to Roland.

“Ah, now you talk. Now you say something,” he cried in his impetuous way. “Embrace me. You are all right.”

Roland heaved a sigh of relief when, five minutes later, the aeroplane disappeared over the brow of the hill. Then he began to sneeze again.