The girl was getting calmer, though quivering all over. She only sobbed now; "He'll be killed! He'll be killed! Oh my poor little Gabriel!" "I tell you he will not," reiterated Evan. "I don't believe he will be killed even when I cut the string. He will alight gently somewhere, as the gas in the balloons gradually exudes, and somebody will take care of him. It may not be in this county, but he will alight. When will you marry me?" The young woman did not answer. "Salome," said Evan, now pleadingly. "You know that you love me and that I love you. Why not stop all this dalliance and coquetting? you know you are going to be my wife. Will you not make it all definite?" Salome looked up into her lover's eyes, then bowed her head. Finally she looked up again and sobbed out: "Y-e-s, only pull down little Gabriel." "When shall the wedding be? Will the twentieth of next month do?" "Y-e-s." Evan closed his pocket knife. Then taking hold of the cord he began pulling little Gabriel down. As that youth, still loudly bellowing, reached the ground, Salome caught him up and darted into the house with him. Evan paid slight attention to people who came running to see what the red thing aloft had been. He said only that he had been trying an experiment. Then he gathered up the balloons and carried them into the woodshed, where they rose in a mass to the roof and stayed there. Then he went into the house and had a talk with the indignant Salome. It was an exciting session, but it ended peaceably. Well, she married him, as she had promised, for honesty was among her virtues. She looks upon her husband as a desperate character and, so, is in love with him, of course. I'm not surprised at the whole business. It was Evan all over. CHAPTER XXIV THE SWISS FAMILY ROBERTSON The fact as was learned early in the morning, that there must elapse one more day before relief came, was, it must be feared, absolutely a relief to Colonel Livingstone. When Stafford told him the situation he beamed. He was certainly at his best. He called upon the Man From Nowhere. The title of The Man From Nowhere had been bestowed upon a quiet and dignified gentleman who but smiled and listened all the time, but had said very little. During the first stress of the imprisonment, he had been one of the most energetic and helpful among those of the passengers who had shown the quality of facing a situation. He had exerted himself to some purpose from the beginning and had assisted in making more or less comfortable those who did not seem capable of taking care of themselves. He had been given the title of "The Man From Nowhere," because he had declared that he really had no home but was a wanderer for pleasure, with no fixed place of abode. He was a man of about sixty years of age, grey-mustached and affable. Now, as he came forward, with an apparent degree of awakened interest in what was going on, he was received with applause. It was the Colonel, as usual, who expressed himself: