eiled that figure of abasement: and I will lift but a corner of the
sheet.

Wind in hidden gullies, and the talk of lapsing waters on the hillside,
filled all the spaces of the night. The high-road lay at my feet, fifty
yards or so below my boulder. Soon after two o'clock (as I made it)
lamps appeared in the direction of Swanston, and drew nearer; and two
hackney coaches passed me at a jog-trot, towards the opaline haze into
which the weather had subdued the lights of Edinburgh. I heard one of
the drivers curse as he went by, and inferred that my open-handed cousin
had shirked the weather and gone comfortably from the Assembly Rooms to
Dumbreck's Hotel and bed, leaving the chase to his mercenaries.

After this you are to believe that I dozed and woke by snatches. I
watched the moon descend in her foggy circle; but I saw also the
mulberry face and minatory forefinger of Mr. Romaine, and caught myself
explaining to him and Mr. Robbie that their joint proposal to mortgage
my inheritance for a flying broomstick took no account of the
working-model of the whole Rock and Castle of Edinburgh, which I dragged
about by an ankle chain. Anon I was pelting with Rowley in a
claret-coloured chaise through a cloud of robin-redbreasts; and with
that I awoke to the veritable chatter of birds and the white light of
dawn upon the hills.

The truth is, I had come very near to the end of my endurance. Cold and
rain together, supervening in that hour of the spirit's default, may
well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth
of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of
body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down
to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I
spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of
white upon it--a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce
the price upon the head of Champdivers? "At least I will see how they
describe him"--this I told myself; but that which tugged at my feet was
the baser fascination of fright. I had thought my spine inured by the
night's experiences to anything in the way of cold shivers. I discovered
my mistake while approaching that scrap of paper.

"AERIAL ASCENSION EXTRAORDINARY!!!
IN THE MONSTRE BALLOON
_LUNARDI_

PROFESSOR BYFIELD (BY DIPLOMA), THE WORLD-RENOWNED EXPONENT OF
AEROSTATICS AND AERONAUTICS,

Has the honour to inform the Nobi