"Hurrah. All well. Air, food, and friends! what
more can man require? Hurrah."

How like George! How like Ben Brannan! How like
George's wife! How like them all! And they were all
well! Yet poor _I_ could not answer. Nay, I could
only guess what Haliburton had done. But I have never,
I believe, been so grateful since I was born.

After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed
their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out:--

"Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be."

Of the meaning of this, lonely _I_ had, of course,
no idea.

"I have a power of seven hundred," continued George.
How did he get that? He has never told us. But this I
can see, that all our analogies deceive us,--of views of
the sea from Mt. Washington, or of the Boston State House
from Wachusett. For in these views we look through forty
or eighty miles of dense terrestrial atmosphere. But
Orcutt was looking nearly vertically through an
atmosphere which was, most of it, rare indeed, and pure
indeed, compared with its lowest stratum.

In the record-book of my observations these
despatches are entered as 12 and 13. Of course it was
impossible for me to reply. All I could do was to