was a quite impossible thing for man. "But he might have tried it,"
said many, "after carrying the thing so far."

In the evening, when he was comparatively alone, Banghurst broke
down and went on like a man of clay. I have been told he wept,
which must have made an imposing scene, and he certainly said
Filmer had ruined his life, and offered and sold the whole apparatus
to MacAndrew for half-a-crown. "I've been thinking--" said MacAndrew
at the conclusion of the bargain, and stopped.

The next morning the name of Filmer was, for the first time, less
conspicuous in the New Paper than in any other daily paper in the world.
The rest of the world's instructors, with varying emphasis, according
to their dignity and the degree of competition between themselves
and the New Paper, proclaimed the "Entire Failure of the New Flying
Machine," and "Suicide of the Impostor." But in the district of North
Surrey the reception of the news was tempered by a perception of unusual
aerial phenomena.

Overnight Wilkinson and MacAndrew had fallen into violent argument
on the exact motives of their principal's rash act.

"The man was certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his
science went he was NO impostor," said MacAndrew, "and I'm prepared
to give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson,
so soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I've
no faith in all this publicity for experimental trials."

And to that end, while all the world was reading of the certain
failure of the new flying machine, MacAndrew was soaring and curvetting