Now came the sweep of a rising roar from the sky with the command to attention of the rush of a fast express-train past a country railway station. Two Gray dirigibles with their escort of aeroplanes--in formation like that which Mrs. Galland and Feller had seen race along the frontier--were bearing toward the pass over the pass road. One glimpse of the squadron was as a match to Feller's military passion. He swept off his old straw hat and with it all of the gardener's chrysalis. Feller the artillerist gazed aloft in feverish excitement. "Lanny has them guessing! They're bound to know his plans if it takes all the air craft in the shop!" he exclaimed. "And what are we doing? Yes, what are we doing?" he cried in alarm as his glance swept the sky in front of the squadron, already even with the terrace in its terrific speed. The automatic and the riflemen in the tower banged away to no purpose, for the aerostatic officers of the Grays had been apprised of the danger in that direction. "Minutes, seconds count! Where are our high-angle guns?" Feller went on. He was unconsciously gesticulating with all the fervor of hurrying a battery into place to cover an infantry retreat in a crisis. "And they're turning! What's the matter? What are high-angle guns for, anyway, with such targets naked over our lines? Ah-h! Beautiful!" The central sections of the envelope of the rear dirigible had been torn in shreds; it was buckling. Clouds of blue shrapnel smoke broke around its gondola. A number of field-guns joined forces with a battery of high-angle guns in a havoc that left a drifting derelict that had ceased to exist to Feller's mind immediately it was out of action; for he saw that the remainder of the squadron had completed its loop and was pointing toward the plain. "And they were low enough to see all they want to know and rising now--evidently already out of reach of our guns--and nothing against them!" he groaned as he saw a clear sky ahead of the big disk and its attending wings, while clenched fists pumping up and down with the movement of his forearms shook his whole body in a palpitation of angry disgust. "Lanny, what's the matter! Lanny, they've beaten you! Eh? What? What--" A long whistle broke from his lips. His body still, transfixed, he cupped his hands over his eyes. "So, that is it! That is your plan, Lanny, old boy!" he shouted. "But if one of their confounded little aviators gets back, he has the story!" From a great altitude, literally out of the blue of heaven, high over the Gray lines, Marta made out a Brown squadron of dirigibles and planes descending across the track of the Grays.