Well, Evan didn't waste any time. He contrived it so that he was in the city often and, as often, was at Johnson's house, making vigorous love to Miss Salome. Finally, he accepted a good city position with his firm and abandoned the road, just for the sake of being near his sweetheart, though he liked the road better. All would have gone well now, but for the young lady. He knew she cared for him, for she had admitted it, but she was a bit of a coquette and couldn't resist the temptation of playing a fish so firmly hooked. Urge as Evan might, he could not persuade her to fix a date for their marriage. She would not absolutely deny him, but she was elusive. He became desperate. Something must be done. It was. One day just as Evan, brooding as he walked, neared the home of his sweetheart to renew his useless pleading, he noticed little Gabriel playing in the yard with a toy balloon the string of which was tied to a button-hole of his jacket and which tugged strenuously away at him. Evan sat down upon the horse-block in front of the house, watching the boy dreamily, and trying to devise a plan to bring Miss Salome to terms, when, all at once, his planning ceased as suddenly as the stopping of a clock. The boy and the balloon had given him an awful inspiration! He returned to town. That evening Evan Cummings bought a toy balloon, some bird-shot and one of the tiniest of little baskets. In his room at the hotel he attached the string of the balloon to the handle of the basket. Then, as the balloon with its burden rose toward the ceiling, he dropped shot after shot into the little receptacle until the balloon could no longer raise it. Taking the little basket of shot to the drug store, he had the basket and shot carefully weighed. He now knew the exact lifting power of a toy balloon--it was just five ounces. He had seen Gabriel weighed and knew that he tipped the scale at forty-two pounds. The calculation was easy; sixteen ounces in a pound; sixteen multiplied by forty-two makes six hundred and seventy-two. Gabriel, therefore, weighed 672 ounces: a single toy balloon would lift not quite five ounces; five goes into six hundred and seventy-two, one hundred and thirty-four times; one hundred and thirty-five toy balloons would lift little Gabriel. The next day Evan went to a harness shop and had a stout leather harness made which would just about fit Gabriel, passing round his small body under the arms and over his shoulders, from each of which two broad straps extended upward and met in a strong iron ring. Then he went out and invested in two hundred and fifty toy balloons--thus adding over an hundred for requirements and contingencies. He bought, also, a stout piece of clothesline, fifty feet long, and a thick cord two hundred feet long, which would, if required, sustain the weight of a man. The next afternoon he attached the balloons to the clothesline, not all in a bunch, but at intervals, that in the event of an accident to one,