a swinging bough, his coat-tails were
torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of England was
splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow beard forward
with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes were still fixed
on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush of sunset seemed
coloured like a sunset cloud.

"After all," he said, "it is very beautiful!"

"It is singularly and strangely beautiful!" said the Professor. "I wish
the beastly gas-bag would burst!"

"No," said Dr. Bull, "I hope it won't. It might hurt the old boy."

"Hurt him!" said the vindictive Professor, "hurt him! Not as much as I'd
hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!"

"I don't want him hurt, somehow," said Dr. Bull.

"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale
about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was
anybody."

"I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it isn't
that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst because--"

"Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?"

"Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull
desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his being
the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything
nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for
old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing
baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn't prevent my
fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him
because he was so fat?"

"You will not," said the Secretary.

"I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so
light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but
he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate
strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It
was like the old speculations--what would happen if an elephant could
leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?"

"Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the sky like
a grasshopper."

"And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old
Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like
that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting
with some good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a spring day?
You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that