sound. Straight up in the air over the treetops. A voice hissed in empty air toward the stars.

"Shut up! You want him to tell Pa?"

There was no sound of a motor up aloft. There was no sound anywhere except his own motor's murmurous purring and the dripping of condensed fog from the trees. There could be no flying craft overhead. Not possibly!

The child's voice wailed, up above the treetops.

"B-but I w-want to go home!"

The other, angry voice, a boy's voice, spoke again. It was halfway but no nearer to the voice of a man. It was hushed and threatening.

"Air you a-goin' to hush your mouth?"

Then, suddenly, Murfree's heart beat again. Scientist or no, he had felt unreasoning, superstitious terror at the wailing of a child in the night and fog above the treetops. But the phrasing of that angry boy's voice was familiar. It was not local phrasing or accent. It was Smoky Mountain talk, and Bud Gregory and his tribe of children talked that way.

Murfree raised his own voice, though it shook a little at the sheer impossibility of the whole affair.

"Up there!" he called. "This is Mr. Murfree! Aren't you Bud Gregory's children?"

A pause. Then the little girl's voice, startled and glad.

"Yes, suh, Mr. Murfree! We were out fishin' and we went to look at Seattle and comin' back we got lost."

Murfree swallowed.

"Where are you, in heaven's name!"

"Right over your head, suh, in our fishin' boat." This was the boy, dubious and uneasy. "We can see your headlights, suh. If you' goin' to see Pa—"

Murfree swallowed again. This was plainly sheer insanity. Two of Bud Gregory's children might very well be in a boat, and fishing, even two hours after sundown. But a boat in which one went fishing should not be floating some forty or fifty feet above treetops at least two miles from the nearest water. Murfree would have credited himself with sudden lunacy, but that he knew Bud Gregory.

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