“What! when you saved the day by your nimbleness and square common sense? See here, Frank, I’m mightily pleased with you, and if you will drop in here to-morrow I think I can put you in the way of earning a few more of those precious notes.” Frank bowed his thanks and left the office with a light heart. He went straight home, entered the house quietly, and actually startled his mother by silently dropping the five-dollar bill on the book in her lap. Mrs. Ismond shared her son’s pleasure when Frank recited his brisk experiences of the morning. He ate a good lunch with appetizing vigor, secured his bicycle repair kit, and was soon down the road, whistling cheerily all the way to the big woods. As Frank neared the spot where he had left Christmas and the bicycle, he was greeted with loud and repeated barking. “That’s strange,” he mused. “Christmas isn’t given to such demonstrations when on duty. Some one must have come in sight or hearing. Hey, old fellow, what’s all this rumpus?” questioned Frank, as, emerging from a copse, he came in full view of the dog. Christmas was running up and down in front of the bicycle. He would face in a certain direction and pose and bark. He even ran up to his master as Frank approached, and seizing his coat in his teeth gently but resolutely pulled him in the direction he had pointed. “He means something by all this,” declared Frank. “Go ahead,” he ordered. Christmas, thus advised, bounded forward among some big trees. Frank, coming up with him after a jaunt of about three hundred feet, found him squatted on his haunches under a giant oak tree, looking up among its branches. Frank looked up, too. A moving object attracted his attention. “Why,” said Frank, staring fixedly, “it’s a balloon.” This he discerned beyond question. He could plainly make out its slack rigging. An ungainly, half-distended gas bag was wobbling about in the topmost branches of the tree. Lower down, turned sideways and partly smashed in, was a big wicker basket. “It must be the balloon that little ragged fellow told about, the same one that I saw when I took that header from the bicycle,” decided Frank. “There couldn’t have been any one in it. Oh, say--but there was, Mercy!” and Frank gave a violent start and quick gasp. He stood transfixed with a sudden thrilling emotion akin to terror. His eye sweeping the tree expanse keenly, he now made out, lying across two limbs about thirty feet from the ground, a human figure. This form was motionless, and bent the branches considerably. As the breeze stirred them, they rocked like a cradle. Frank guessed out the situation instantly. The balloon had driven or dropped into the tree top, shattering the cage and tipping out its pilot.