ed, quivering along all its borders in its peculiar way, and
humping up in the middle shot me five feet into the air like a cat
tossed from a schoolboy's blanket.

As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of
dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was
ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with
his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing
all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties
of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly in my line
as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light
and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus,
and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him
sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went
into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people,
until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms
and waving legs and arms. When we had done the mass disentangled
itself and I was able to raise my head from the shoulder of someone on
whom I had fallen, lifting him, or her--which was it?--into a sitting
posture alongside of me at the same time, while the others rose about
us like wheat-stalks after a storm, and edged shyly off, as well as
they might.

Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me, with a flush of
gentle surprise on his face, and dapper hands that felt cautiously
about his anatomy for injured places. He looked so quaintly rueful yet
withal so good-tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter in
spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate, musical
chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the same time
to a cut upon my finger that was bleeding a little. I shook my head,
meaning thereby that it was nothing, but the stranger with graceful
solicitude took my hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately
tore a strip of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he was
wearing and bound the place up with a woman's tenderness.

Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was time to look about me. Where
was I? It was not the Broadway; it was not Staten Island on a Saturday
afternoon. The night was just over, and the sun on the point of
rising. Yet it was still shadowy all about, the air being marvellously
tepid and pleasant to the senses. Quaint, soft aromas like the br