Then it would cease for a few moments, and directly
after begin again.

"There's somebody," said Fin; and then, turning a sharp corner, they
came suddenly on Mr Frank Pratt, perched in a sitting posture on the
top of a huge, round lith of granite, with his back to them, and his
little legs stretching out almost at right angles. He was in his
threatened tweeds, a natty little deerstalker's hat was cocked on one
side of his head; in one hand he held a stick, and in the other a large
pipe, from which he drew refreshment between the strains of the polka he
tried to whistle.

Mr Frank Pratt was evidently enjoying the beauty of the place after his
own particular fashion; for, being a short man, he had a natural love
for elevated places. As a boy, he had delighted in climbing trees, and
sitting in the highest fork that would bear him, eating cakes or
munching apples; as a man, cakes and apples had given way to extremely
black pipes, in company with which he alternately visited the top of the
Monument, the Duke of York's column, and the golden gallery of Saint
Paul's, where he regretted that the cost was eighteen-pence to go any
higher. In these places, where it was strictly forbidden, he indulged
in surreptitious smokes, from which his friends deduced the proposition
that if not the cakes, probably the apples had been stolen.

The tail stone then being handy, Mr Pratt was enjoying himself, when he
suddenly became aware of steps behind, and hopped down in a most
ungraceful fashion to stare with astonishment so blank, that by the time
he had raised his hat Fin had gone by with her chin raised in the air,
and a very disdainful look upon her countenance, and her sister, with a
slightly heightened colour, had plunged into conversation with Mr
Mervyn.

Pratt stood half paralysed for a few moments, watching the party, until
a turn in the lane hid them from sight, and then he refilled and lit his
pipe, from which the burning weed had fallen.

"It's a mistake," he said at last, between tremendous puffs at his pipe.
"It's impossible. I don't believe it. One might call it a
hallucination, only that the beardless female face is so similar in one
woman to another that a man easily makes a mistake. Those cannot be the
same girls that we saw at the steeplechase--it isn't possible; but there
is a resemblance, certainly; and, treating the thing philosophically, I
should say here we have the real explanation of what is looked upon