g high aloft in one of those
aerial dances that so much delight them. I had quite forgotten it, but
it came back to me at once that these creatures, attracted doubtless by
what they took to be an unknown kind of bird, swooped down towards the
balloon and circled round it like so many satellites to a heavenly body.
I was fearful lest they should strike at it with their long and
formidable beaks, in which case all would have been soon over; either
they were afraid, or they had satisfied their curiosity--at any rate,
they let us alone; but they kept with us till we were well away from the
capital. Strange, how completely this incident had escaped me."

I return to my father's thoughts as he made his way back to his old camp.

As for the reversed position of Professor Panky's clothes, he remembered
having given his own old ones to the Queen, and having thought that she
might have got a better dummy on which to display them than the headless
scarecrow, which, however, he supposed was all her ladies-in-waiting
could lay their hands on at the moment. If that dummy had never been
replaced, it was perhaps not very strange that the King could not at the
first glance tell back from front, and if he did not guess right at
first, there was little chance of his changing, for his first ideas were
apt to be his last. But he must find out more about this.

Then how about the watch? Had their views about machinery also changed?
Or was there an exception made about any machine that he had himself
carried?

Yram too. She must have been married not long after she and he had
parted. So she was now wife to the Mayor, and was evidently able to have
things pretty much her own way in Sunch'ston, as he supposed he must now
call it. Thank heaven she was prosperous! It was interesting to know
that she was at heart a sceptic, as was also her light-haired son, now
Head Ranger. And that son? Just twenty years of age! Born seven months
after marriage! Then the Mayor doubtless had light hair too; but why did
not those wretches say in which month Yram was married? If she had
married soon after he had left, this was why he had not been sent for or
written to. Pray heaven it was so. As for current gossip, people would
talk, and if the lad was well begotten, what could it matter to them
whose son he was? "But," thought my father, "I am glad I did not meet
him on my way down. I had rather have been killed by some one else."

Hanky and P