"For Mr. Sherbrand. Father’s friend. The Flying Man I’ve told you about." "Mr.—— Where is he?" Patrine asked vaguely, looking all about her. In the tumult of her thoughts the name that had been upon a crumpled card suggested no association with that so rapturously uttered by the boy. "There!" Bawne pointed upwards with another of the excited laughs. "Carrying out a hovering-test. The man with the stop-watch is timing him, and the other with the binnocs is observing him. He’s French—no end of an official swell! The French Government sent him," went on the boy, with infinite relish, "to see Mr. Sherbrand test his invention. He thought they didn’t catch on, but the hoverer has fetched them. If he hovers for twenty minutes, ten thousand feet up, his fortune’s made!—I heard a fellow say so to the Instructor. Man alive! isn’t it topping that you and I should be here to-day!" *CHAPTER XXVII* *SIR ROLAND TELLS A STORY* While yet the Bird of War hovered invisible at ten thousand feet of altitude, and the lungs of the men aboard her toiled and laboured, and foam gathered about their nostrils and lips, Saxham stood talking with the man who in his eyes ranked above all others, the tried and trusty friend of fourteen years. In those unforgettable months of the Siege of Gueldersdorp you might have noticed a crow’s foot or so at the corner of the Chief’s keen falcon-eyes. To-day, their hazel brightness undiminished, they looked at Life from a network of fine criss-crossed lines. But Time, the spider, had spun no web in the fine alert brain, and the man’s heart was free from crow’s feet or wrinkles. Fresh and evergreen, it was as it would always be, an oasis of kindness for the downhearted or weary, watered by the twin wells of sympathy and enthusiasm. He said, speaking to Saxham of the invisible Sherbrand: "I wish we had a million like him!" Saxham answered: "I wish we had several millions. He is a fine, energetic type. A bit of a hero-worshipper—a bit of a philosopher, a bit of a stoic: ’_He hath seen men rise to authority without envy, and schooled himself to endure adversity, that he might bear himself the better when his time should come to rule._’" "His time is coming, or I am no judge of capability. And you quoted from the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus, I think? I’ve always found good reading-meat in that and the _Discourses_. Used to carry a little sixpenny copy about in my pocket, until I wore it to rags." "I have often seen and noted its raggedness, and its uncompromising Isabella-hue!" "It was negroid in complexion before the Relief of Gueldersdorp. Perhaps you won’t be astonished when I tell you I have got it now." The Chief’s smiling eyes narrowed in laughter. "My wife has bound it gorgeously, and with other volumes of my Siege library, it occupies a special and most sacred shelf near my writing-desk at home." He went on: