he surely did fade out pronto.”

That fact stuck in the boy’s mind, and now Bob was some distance from his starting point, so Austin moved to the front of the helicopter lest he lose sight of the youngster. There was an uncanniness about the place, and Jim wished that his step-brother would hurry with his investigations, but he appreciated the fact that Bob was thoroughly interested in what he was doing, and that it would be unfair to urge his step-brother to shorten his investigations. They could not possibly linger in the country many days and this opportunity seemed like an especially good one which should be made the most of, while it was possible.

Suddenly, from the east, Austin noticed a thick white cloud moving swiftly toward the coast, and forgetting Caldwell for the moment, he studied it in puzzled wonder. It certainly was not vapor of any kind, it was too substantial looking, and another thing he observed was that it did not move with the wind, which was from the south, although the breeze did affect its direction somewhat. As it drew closer, he noticed that it was considerably deeper than when he first picked it out against the sky, also from its midst tiny particles, almost like snow, seemed to hesitate and fall.

“What in heck?” Jim had his field glasses slung in a case from his shoulder, and now he hastily took them out and in a moment was examining the strange phenomena. “Well, what do you know about that!” he ejaculated.

Magnified by the glasses, the boy saw countless small, white butterflies, fluttering and poising in the sunlight. There were myriads of the tiny insects flying toward him, and as they came, hundreds of their number dropped out and tumbled toward the ground as if too exhausted to continue their journey. As the boy watched in astonishment he had no idea of what it was, then suddenly he remembered reading that every year the butterflies, their life work completed, start in a tremendous migration, drifting southeasterly along the sea coast until they finally reach the sea, where they drop exhausted into the water and die by the millions. He knew that science is unable to explain the strange instinct which prompts them to choose death sometimes thousands of miles from their breeding ground, and only a few weeks before he had read an article by someone who had seen this great funeral cortege when it hovered near a steamer. As the boy recalled, this migration usually took place in the autumn, but he decided that probably in different localities the time of year differed.

“Gee, they must 

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