stantly the great balloon from the
crowd and soared majestically toward the heavens.

The Woggle-Bug had escaped the Chinaman, but he didn't know whether to
be glad or not.

For the balloon was earning him into the clouds, and he had no idea how
to manage it, or to make it descend to earth again. When he peered over
the edge of the basket he could hear the faint murmur of the crowd, and
dimly see the enraged Professor (who had come too late) pounding the
Chinaman, while the Chinaman tried to dissect the Professor with his
knife.

Then all was blotted out; clouds rolled about him; night fell. The man
in the moon laughed at him; the stars winked at each other as if
delighted at the Woggle-Bug's plight, and a witch riding by on her
broomstick yelled at him to keep on the right side of the road, and not
run her down.

But the Woggle-Bug, squatted in the bottom of the basket and hugging
his precious parcel to his bosom, paid no attention to anything but his
own thoughts.

He had often ridden in the Gump; but never had he been so high as this,
and the distance to the ground made him nervous.

When morning came he saw a strange country far beneath him, and longed
to tread the earth again.

Now all woggle-bugs are born with wings, and our highly-magnified one
had a beautiful, broad pair of floppers concealed beneath ample
coat-tails. But long ago he had learned that his wings were not strong
enough to lift his big body from the ground, so he had never tried to
fly with them.

Here, however, was an occasion when he might put these wings to good
use, for if he spread them in the air and then leaped over the side of
the basket they would act in the same way a parachute does, and bear
him gently to the ground.

No sooner did this thought occur to him than he put it into practice.

Disentangling his wings from his coat-tails, he spread them as wide as
possible and then jumped from the car of the balloon.

Down, down the Woggle-Bug sank; but so slowly that there was no danger
in the flight. He began to see the earth again, lying beneath him like
a sun-kissed panorama of mud and frog-ponds and rocks and brushwood.

There were few trees, yet it was our insect's fate to drop directly
above what trees there were, so that presently he came ker-plunk into a
mass of tangled branches--and stuck there, with his legs dangling
helplessly between two limbs and his wings caught in the foliage at
either side.

Below was a group o