“What a magnificent flagstaff that would make! I’d like to see Old Glory floating there. Believe I’ll suggest it to the Magician--that’s what this woodlander is--and doubtless he’ll attend to that little matter. Shades of Aladdin!” Adrian was so startled that he dropped into a chair, the better to sustain himself against further Arabian-Nights-like discoveries. It was a flagstaff! Somebody was climbing it--Margot! Up, up, like a squirrel, her blonde head appearing first on one side, then the other, a glowing budget strapped to her back. Adrian gasped. No sailor could have been more fleet or sure-footed. It seemed but a moment before that slender figure had scaled the topmost branch and was unrolling the brilliant burden it had borne. The Stars and Stripes, of course. Adrian would have been bitterly disappointed if it had been anything else this agile maiden hoisted from that dizzy height. [Illustration: MARGOT UNFURLED THE FLAG] In wild excitement and admiration the watcher leaned out of his window and shouted hoarsely:-- “Hurrah! H-u-r-rah! H-U-R--!” The cheer died in his throat. Something had happened. Something too awful to contemplate. Adrian’s eyes closed that he might not see. Had her foot slipped? Had his own cry reached and startled her? For she was falling--falling! And the end could be but one. CHAPTER VI A ONE-SIDED STORY Adrian was not a gymnast, though he had seen and admired many wonderful feats performed by his own classmates. But he had never beheld a miracle, and such he believed had been accomplished when, upon reaching the foot of that terrible tree, he found Margot sitting beneath it, pale and shaken, but, apparently, unhurt. She had heard his breathless crashing up the slope and greeted him with a smile and the tremulous question:-- “How did you know where I was?” “You aren’t--dead?” “Certainly not. I might have been, though, but God took care.” “Was it my cheers frightened you?” “Was it you, then? I heard something, different from the wood sounds, and I looked quick to see. Then my foot slipped and I went down--a way. I caught a branch just in time, and--please, don’t tell uncle. I’d rather do that myself.” “You should never do such a thing. The idea of a girl climbing trees at all, least of any such a tree as that!” He threw his head back and looked upward, through the green spiral, to the brilliant sky. The enormous height revived the horror he had felt as he leaped through the window and rushed to the mountain. “Who planned such a death-trap as that, anyway?” “I did.” “You! A girl!” “Yes. Why not? It’s great fun, usually.” “You’d better have been learning to sew.” “I can sew, but I don’t like it. Angelique does that. I do like climbing and canoeing and botanizing and geologizing and astronomizing and--” Adrian threw up his hands in protest. “What sort of creature are you, anyway?” “Just plain girl.” “Anything but that!”