scatter,” he supplied. “I got that on good authority. Some of you go to other schools and some to work, depending on what you’re taking up.”

“That’s about it. We’ll just have to work and hope we meet again over this blessed, tantalizing, mesmerizing radio,” she laughed. “And now, what do you say we take the radio over to my house and then make a night of it?”

And that was just what they did.

Monday afternoon came, and with it, many a long-drawn breath.

“Sally, I’m scared,” Barbara whispered, as they piled into the car that was to take them on their last trip to the field.

“You wouldn’t be natural if you weren’t,” was the cheering response. “All the same, try to forget it.”

In the week that had passed, the eight of them, two girls and six boys, had formed the habit of singing on the way out. Now, when at last they rolled away, a youthful voice struck up:

“Where have I heard that before?” another boy groaned. For all that, they sang it with gusto.

“‘Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main,’” came next.

Then the boy from Kentucky started:

“‘The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home—’”

His voice broke on the second line. Sally swallowed hard, but they sang it through to the end.

“Ioway! Ioway!” shouted the boy from the midwest. “That’s where the tall corn grows.”

They all laughed, but when the strains of “Swanee River” came rolling out, they were in a mellow mood once more.

When they arrived at the field they found a captive balloon straining at its ropes. Beneath it hung a platform and at the very center of the platform was a round hole.

“That,” said Sally, “is the famous hole in the sky.”

“On fields where paratroops are trained we have towers to jump from, but they cost a pile of money. A balloon works just as well,” a friendly lieutenant explained.

“Sure, 

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