n ascending
steadily, and Byfield's English thermometer stood at thirteen degrees. I
borrowed from the heap a thicker overcoat, in the pocket of which I was
lucky enough to find a pair of furred gloves; and leaned over for
another look below, still with a corner of my eye for the aeronaut, who
stood biting his nails, as far from me as the car allowed.

The sea-fog had vanished, and the south of Scotland lay spread beneath
us from sea to sea, like a map in monotint. Nay, yonder was England,
with the Solway cleaving the coast--a broad, bright spearhead, slightly
bent at the tip--and the fells of Cumberland beyond, mere hummocks on
the horizon; all else flat as a board or as the bottom of a saucer.
White threads of high-road connected town to town: the intervening hills
had fallen down, and the towns, as if in fright, had shrunk into
themselves, contracting their suburbs as a snail his horns. The old poet
was right who said that the Olympians had a delicate view. The
lace-makers of Valenciennes might have had the tracing of those towns
and high-roads; those knots of _guipure_ and ligatures of finest
_reseau_-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on--this,
with its arteries and nodules of public traffic--was a nation; that each
silent nodule held some thousands of men, each man moderately ready to
die in defence of his shopboard and hen-roost; it came into my mind that
my Emperor's emblem was the bee, and this Britain the spider's web, sure
enough.

Byfield came across and stood at my elbow.

"Mr. Ducie, I have considered your offer, and accept it. It's a curst
position----"

"For a public character," I put in affably.

"Don't, sir! I beg that you don't. Your words just now made me suffer a
good deal: the more, that I perceive a part of them to be true. An
aeronaut, sir, has ambition--how can he help it? The public, the
newspapers, feed it for a while; they _fete_, and flatter, and applaud
him. But in its heart the public ranks him with the mountebank, and
reserves the right to drop him when tired of his tricks. Is it wonderful
that he forgets this sometimes? For in his own thoughts he is not a
mountebank--no, by God, he is not!"

The man spoke with genuine passion. I held out my hand.

"Mr. Byfield, my words were brutal. I beg you will allow me to take them
back."

He shook his head. "They were true, sir; partly true, that is."

"I am not so sure. A balloon, as you hint and I begin to discover, may