waved him away with its wing.

"Quick, my boy," it gasped. "We must make a strategic retreat! Meet me on the ledge in the morning. Ouch!" The Phoenix beat at the smoldering sparks in its tail and flew off, leaving a trail of acrid smoke hanging in the air.

David had the presence of mind to gather up all the tools, the wire, bell, and pushbutton, and one of the Phoenix's feathers, which had been torn out during the fall. He slipped through a cellar window, hid the equipment under a stack of old boxes, and ran noisily up the stairs into the kitchen.

"Hey!" he shouted. "The lights are out!"

"Is that you, dear?" came Mother's anxious voice from the dining room.

"The telephone's dead!" Dad shouted from the hall.

Aunt Amy came bumping down the stairs with a candle. "It's that burglar!" she cried. "Turning out all the lights so he can murder us in our beds!"

"Look!" David shouted, "the line's broken in our back yard!"

They could hear the wailing of sirens now. Fire trucks, repair trucks, and police cars pulled up in front of the house. Everyone in the block turned out to see what had happened. It took the repair men an hour to untangle the wires and fix them. And all the time policemen were going through the crowd, asking questions and writing things down in their notebooks. They were looking rather haggard, David thought.

8: _In Which David and the Phoenix Visit a Banshee, and a Surprise Is Planted in the Enemy's Camp_

Next day Mother asked David to help her straighten out the garden, which had been trampled by the repair men; so he could not go to see the Phoenix until after lunch. But when that was finished, he rushed up the mountainside as fast as he could, wondering all the way what he and the Phoenix were going to do now.

The ledge was empty when he got there. He shouted, "Phoenix!" and listened."Hel-l-lp!" came a faint answering cry from the other end of the ledge.

David jumped through the thicket. A pitiful sight met his eyes. There was the Phoenix, dangling by one foot from the snare, its wings feebly struggling and its free foot clawing the air. The feathers of its wings and tail were singed. 

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