htseers, and they gave me passage with all
the good-humour in life.

I believe that I descended upon that crowd as a godsend, a dancing
rivulet of laughter. They needed entertainment. A damper, less
enthusiastic company never gathered to a public show. Though the rain
had ceased, and the sun shone, those who possessed umbrellas were not to
be coaxed, but held them aloft with a settled air of gloom which defied
the lenitives of nature and the spasmodic cajolery of the worst band in
Edinburgh. "It'll be near full, Jock?" "It wull." "He'll be startin' in
a meenit?" "Aiblins he wull." "Wull this be the sixt time ye've seen
him?" "I shudna wonder." It occurred to me that, had we come to bury
Byfield, not to praise him, we might have displayed a blither interest.

Byfield himself, bending from the car beneath his gently swaying canopy
of liver-colour and pale blue, directed the proceedings with a mien of
saturnine preoccupation. He may have been calculating the receipts. As I
squeezed to the front, his underlings were shifting the pipe which
conveyed the hydrogen gas, and the _Lunardi_ strained gently at its
ropes. Somebody with a playful thrust sent me staggering into the clear
space beneath.

And here a voice hailed and fetched me up with a round turn.

"Ducie, by all that's friendly! Playmate of my youth and prop of my
declining years, how goes it?"

It was the egregious Dalmahoy. He clung and steadied himself by one of
the dozen ropes binding the car to earth; and with an air of doing it
all by his unaided cleverness--an air so indescribably, so majestically
drunken, that I could have blushed for the poor expedients which had
carried me through the throng.

"You'll excuse me if I don't let go. Fact is, we've been keeping it up a
bit all night. Byfield leaves us--to expatiate in realms untrodden by
the foot of man--

"'The feathered tribes on pinions cleave the air;
Not so the mackerel, and, still less, the bear.'

But Byfield does it--Byfield in his Monster Foolardi. One stroke of this
knife (always supposing I miss my own hand), and the rope is severed:
our common friend scales the empyrean. But he'll come back--oh, never
doubt he'll come back!--and begin the dam business over again. Tha's the
law 'gravity 'cording to Byfield."

Mr. Dalmahoy concluded inconsequently with a vocal imitation of a
post-horn; and, looking up, I saw the head and shoulders of Byfield
projected over the rim of the car.

He dre