Mr. Ticks mused over these facts. Why was it that his acquisitive mind had not roamed over this field before? Perhaps because it was acquisitive, not imaginative. _He_ could only account for the unpardonable omission on the ground that there were so many new competing Western cities, each with its peculiar advantages: and that there were so many strange electrical inventions new each day, that he had overlooked Russell and its progressive hobby. Besides, was he not on the staff of a Democratic paper, which would, perhaps, on the whole, prefer to ignore the new Republican State and its flourishing capital. "How was all this power produced if coal was excluded?" asked Mr. Ticks. "Oh, windmills did that. A half a dozen huge windmills, with wings, each as big as the _High Tariff_, were the first things you saw. They were nearly three hundred feet high----" "Good Heavens! Look, man! Look down there! Don't you see something in the middle of the lake!" Swift pulled the professor over to his side of the car, and pointed directly below the balloon. They had now struck a dead calm and the _High Tariff_ floated motionless two thousand feet above the lake. Directly below them was something resting upon the waters. It looked fixed and dead. A log? A wreck? A raft? Slowly the outline took to itself the form of a boat. "Have you a pair of glasses here?" asked Swift, all of a quiver. The professor shoved one of Steward's field-glasses in his hand. "There's a body in that boat!" cried Swift, after a prolonged examination. "No--Great God! It's alive! It moves! It's a _woman_!" The professor took a long look. "I guess you're right. She's a female!" "But she must be saved," insisted Swift. "We must save her." "Yes, Professor Ariel," said Mr. Statis Ticks, sententiously and with trembling dignity; "being a woman, she demands our attention, and, besides, as a survivor she can give us the information and suggest the figures we need." "I'll do my best, gentlemen," said the professor, shaking, his head, "but it's mighty ticklish business. Supposing we drift into the deadly air. I don't know what that vapor means, but it evidently means the 'Sweet By and By.' Even the _High Tariff_ wouldn't save us then!" "Look here, professor," jerked out Swift, peremptorily, "it's got to be done. Now dry up!" "All right, it's a go. I can stand it if you can." So the valve was opened cautiously, and the balloon with majestic slowness, obedient to its master's hand, descended toward the Great Gopher lake, and hovered over the cockle-shell upon its malignant bosom. As the _High Tariff_ approached the little boat, Mr. Ticks looked at it eagerly. "She's alive and unmarried," said the oracle, slowly. "Why unmarried?" asked Swift, with a vague flutter of the heart. He had watched the figure of the woman attentively with the spyglass. It was rounded and supple. Masses of dark-brown hair hid her shoulders and face.