however, was the sight of several airplanes performing evolutions in the distant sky. The sun had descended in the west and its cheerful rays no longer touched the earth, but every now and again one or another of the graceful flying machines caught the glow, and, as if touched by a fairy’s wand, became transformed for the moment into a flashing object of silver and gold.

Don Hale felt his pulse quicken. How wonderful it was to be up in the heavens, soaring with all the ease, the grace, the certainty of a huge bird of the air! It made him long for the time to come when he, too, would have his ambition fulfilled! Presently a deep gruff voice broke in upon his meditations.

“Better come down to earth, son.”

The red-headed chap had spoken.

“Sure thing!” laughed the new student. “What’s that, sir—my last job, you ask? Oh, driving a Red Cross ambulance near the Verdun front.”

“I must say we seem to have met a couple of real heroes,” chuckled the other. “And now, to show you that I haven’t forgotten my Fifth Avenue manners, I’ll introduce these would-be flyers, most of whom as yet haven’t risen above the grasshopper stage of the game.”

Thereupon, with many chuckles, he presented Gene Shannon, Cal Cummings, Ben Holt and Roy Mittengale, adding that his own name was Tom Dorsey.

“Glad to know you all!” declared Don Hale, heartily.

“So am I,” exclaimed George.

“Very gratifying indeed, I’m sure!” laughed Dorsey. “We all hope that later on some people about whom we are hearing a whole lot won’t be so glad to meet us.”

“Oh, you coming aces!” grinned Ben Holt.

“Hooray, hooray, for the future cannon-flying express!” chuckled Mittengale. Then, turning toward Don, he said: “I suppose that the day you didn’t run into at least a half dozen or so hair-breadth escapes must have seemed like a pretty dull one?”

“I had all the close calls I wanted,” confessed the former ambulance driver.

“And yet you are now going in for something which at times ought to make that Red Cross work look like little rides of joy. Ever take a spin in a plane?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, boy! There’s some job ahead of you, then.” Mittengale laughed. “You’ll have to get right down to business.”

“You can just better believe I will!” declared Don, enthusiastically. “I’m mighty anxious for the time to arrive when I can go up to business.”

“It may never come,” suggested Ben Holt. “’Tisn’t everybody who is fitted to be an airman. One or two bad spills—an airplane ready for the scrap pile, or a student now and then killed on the training field, and it’s all off with some!”

“If you don’t look out, Holt, we’ll elect you chairman and sole member of our committee on pessimism,” laughed Dorsey. “Say, son,”—he addressed Don—“I suppose you have all your papers?”

“Yes, and owing to my father having been a member of a Franco-American aviation corps I didn’t have much trouble in getting them,” returned Don. “He’s now an instructor in an American aviation school.”

“What did they do to you? I’d like to know if your experiences were like my own.”

“Well, here’s the story,” laughed the new élève^[1] pilot. “I hoofed it to the recruiting office, which is located in the Invalides at Paris, filled out a questionnaire, signed a document requiring me to obey the military laws of France and be governed and punished thereby; then, after that agony was over, the medical man took me in charge. I just had to show him that I was able to balance myself on one foot with eyes closed, jump straight up from a kneeling position, and also walk a straight line after having been whirled around and