whom the staid small boy was a perpetual fund of amusement. Canon Merion-Smith taught his son at home till he was fourteen, and then, rather doubtfully, sent him to Rochester, whither his friend Harry Gardiner had preceded him. Doubtfully, because he was beginning to distrust his own training. He did not think Denis would be happy at school; but he had no desire to be the parent of a prig. Denis was not happy. He hated arbitrary rules; he could never get into his head that it was not his to reason why. Only Gardiner made his schooldays endurable. He stayed at Rochester till he was nearly seventeen, and then passed unexpectedly without extra coaching straight into Woolwich. He was very clever, and strikingly handsome in a thin, aristocratic way, but he thought no more of his abilities than of his good looks. Denis was proud, but he had not a trace of vanity. He was an example of the not uncommon blend of class arrogance and personal modesty. He passed out of Woolwich first in his batch, went to Chatham, to Rangoon, saw active service in a frontier campaign--the most unhappy years of his life. He had gone into the army to please his father, but he hated discipline, and his heart was set on aeronautics. When Canon Merion-Smith died, Denis resigned his commission and devoted himself to the problems of flight. The way of inventors is hard. He lost all his own money and some of Gardiner's, who came back into his life in time to do the beloved aeroplane a service which Denis, conservative in gratitude, never forgot. He brought himself to the verge of bankruptcy. At his last sixpence he fell in with Sydney Wandesforde, a well-known motor-racing amateur, who had transferred his interest to the new sport, and was as keen on the practical side of flying as Denis on the theoretical. He had what Denis had not--a bottomless purse and family influence to back it. They joined forces, and from that time Denis's future was assured. 

His cousin Lettice--Lætitia Jane Smith--had been in his life for many years, since she, with her mother and sisters, came to settle in the village of which Canon Merion-Smith was incumbent. Rosabel and Stella were charming, half Irish and half French; but Lettice, the eldest, had always been Denis's ally. She was deliberate where they were quick, silent while they chattered, methodical instead of happy-go-lucky. They were clever, but she was the born student, patient, accurate, thorough. The household was always short of money, so Lettice, who suffered in that atmosphere of elegant muddle, left home as soon as she could and set up for herself. She was very fond of her relations, and they of her, but she found them trying to live with. Lettice had a temper; she said herself it was a dumb 

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