They waited anxiously until the time when Conway should have returned to earth again: they knew how much oxygen he carried, how long it would supply him; and when the time was up, they drove silently from the club to the balloon hangar and waited there, scanning the sky and hoping desperately to see the balloon descending near at hand, yet knowing that winds in the upper air were apt to drift the bag many miles Before it returned to earth. Time passed, and no word came of it. They waited now apathetically. They were sure that Conway was dead, and Kisner blamed Welkfurn bitterly. “Why are we waiting here?” Welkfurn asked woodenly. “The balloon won’t come down around here--the wind will drift it.” “All kinds of winds up there. Can’t tell where it went. One wind might drift it one way, then up a little higher another wind might blow it back. Anyhow--” Suddenly Welkfurn cried eagerly: “Kisner, _look_!” He pointed up as he spoke, and finally Kisner saw a speck of gray above another speck of dark, three or four miles to the east. These specks fell together, rapidly, in a straight line earthward. Kisner, running to his car, obtained binoculars, focused them quickly. * * * * * The basket of the balloon stood out quite plainly through the glass, the bag above it twisted hopelessly in the netting. There was no one in the car, and for a moment Kisner hoped that Conway had left his craft when higher up, was somewhere now coming down dangling on his parachute. The wreck hurtled toward the earth. Kisner judged that it was at six thousand feet when he first saw it. It reached four, then three; was plainer to be seen as it descended. [Illustration: The figure seemed to hang a moment on the rim, seemed to try to struggle free, then toppled from the car.] Then something lifted itself up inside the basket, seemed to hang a moment on the rim. It moved! Kisner saw it clearly! Then it sank again. The _Marie_ was almost to the ground--two thousand feet, dropping at one hundred fifty miles an hour. The figure rose again, dully, lethargically. Slowly it climbed up higher in the basket, seemed to try to struggle free. It seemed to slump again, but rose a moment later, and toppled from the car, falling for a time in line with the plunging wreckage. Something white bubbled up above it, checked its fall. Lazily it drifted down. The balloon struck the ground four hundred feet below. Before the parachute had come to earth, Kisner and Welkfurn rode frantically along a road toward where it would come down.... Six minutes later they were lifting Conway carefully into the car. Nearer dead than alive, he fainted as they put him in. * * * * *