Nobody could tell where they were, indeed, figuratively, of course, except--except that the experiment was a failure, so far as any proof to the World was concerned!
Except that Toandoah's hopes were dashed,--if not broken!
The first record from Space was stolen,--or lost.
No! She did not think the nickum had taken it,--that mysterious Jack at a Pinch!
This is what the bleeding heart of Pemrose told her over and over again within the next twenty-four hours,--and after that, too!
True, she had robbed him of his oars and a dance,--or had been responsible for the trick!
She had not made her scout-knights return those ashen blades until the morning after the dance, when they were surreptitiously deposited upon the opposite shore of the lake in the neighborhood of the camp near the insects' egg-boats.
And she had enjoyed herself hugely as the guest of the White Birch Group at the wind-up of the June carnival, while he, twice a rescuer, a friend in a pinch, was drifting helplessly out upon the dark night-waters of the Bowl, trying to paddle with his hands, within hearing of the festive dance music, until some good Samaritan from his own shore rowed out and gave him a homeward tow.
But all this, as the girl passionately told herself, was an everyday trick,--just a paper pellet thrown at one beside the overwhelming blow of the loss of her father's record.
And he who could quote Shakespeare upon "Something rotten in the state of Denmark", amid the horrors of a zero train-wreck, who "liked his excitement warm", had a sense of humor.
True humor is never without a sense of proportion.
But if the nickum was not the thief,--who then?
Ta-te, the tempest--otherwise the mountain gusts--had to be acquitted too.
For at the first dawn after the blighted experiment some thin silk rags of a raven parachute were found clinging, soot-like, to bushes in the spruce wood, together with a portion of a twisted and bent wire frame.
There was not a trace of the diary, the golden egg, the little perforated steel box, with the recording pencil and paper in it. Deprived of its wing, that could not have gone on alone,--without some hand carrying it.
So the weary and despondent searchers were forced to accept Andrew's assertion that "mon or deil" had robbed them; and it was plain from the solemn shake of the "true-penny's" gray head in its up-to-date chauffeur's cap that he, himself, was disposed to lay the blame on a "deev."