"Nothing much, Mr. Swift," was the calm reply "I think
that was Tom and Mr. Sharp in their airship, that's all. I
didn't see it, but the noise sounded like that of the Red Cloud."

"Of course! To be sure!" exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift, the
well-known inventor, as he started down the path in order to
get a good view of the air, unobstructed by the trees. "Yes,
there they are," he added. "That's the airship, but I didn't
expect them back so soon. They must have made good time from
Shopton. I wonder if anything can be the matter that they
hurried so?"

He gazed aloft toward where a queerly-shaped machine was
circling about nearly five hundred feet in the air, for the
craft, after Swooping down close to the house, had ascended
and was now hovering just above the line of breakers that
marked the New Jersey seacoast, where Mr. Swift had taken up
a temporary residence.

"Don't begin worrying, Mr. Swift," advised Mrs. Baggert,
the housekeeper. "You've got too much to do, if you get that
new boat done, to worry."

"That's so. I must not worry. But I wish Tom and Mr. Sharp
would land, for I want to talk to them."

As if the occupants of the airship had heard the words of
the aged inventor, they headed their craft toward earth. The
combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon, a most wonderful