Dashleigh was now perfectly calm, though silent and thoughtful. That one fearful day had effected upon the young nobleman the work of years. Deeply solemn were his reflections. With a conscience neither dead nor unenlightened, the earl had needed no prophet to decipher for him the fiery “letters on the wall” of affliction. Heavily and yet more heavily had descended on him the Almighty’s chastening hand, and every blow had evidently been aimed at his pride! Had he not been humiliated in the presence of his friend,—satirized by his wife, ridiculed by the world, and had he not now by an unconquerable weakness, which a girl would have blushed to betray, been the actual cause of the fearful position in which he and his companions appeared! Bitter, bitter was the humiliation of the proud man! Had he been destitute of the faith which supports, and the hope which cheers, Dashleigh would have been utterly crushed by the successive strokes laid upon him. But in him there was much of the gold, which beneath the hammer “does not break, but extend.” Dashleigh resembled less the son of Kish whom trial drove into fierce despair, than the haughty Assyrian king who, having endured that most humbling degradation which was the appointed punishment for pride, “lifted up” his “eyes unto heaven,” and “blessed the most High,” with a spirit subdued. Strangely had passed the day; as light as the feather down, the balloon floated in the ocean of air. The party in the car had partaken of the slight refreshment which had been provided, in little expectation that even that would be required during a two hours’ expedition. Beverage there was none, for the wine had exploded both the bottles from the cause mentioned in a preceding chapter. The lips of each of the sufferers was parched and dry, and a painful sensation of thirst was added to the trials of the hour. Augustine and Mabel had exhausted all their inventive powers in contriving means to cut an opening in the ball of the balloon. Several attempts had been made, but all had ended in disappointment. The knife, flung upwards with a steady hand, had glanced back from the varnished silk, and fallen through depths which the mind shuddered to calculate. Every effort but strengthened the conviction that all effort was unavailing. There had been silence for a long time in the car,—silence of which dwellers upon earth can scarcely form a conception. There was here no rustling leaf, no buzz of an insect’s wing to break the awful stillness! Motion itself was impalpable, being unaccompanied by the slightest sound! “Augustine,” said the earl, raising himself on his elbow, for he still in a reclining posture occupied the lower part of the car, “do you believe that you can hide from me the fact that you have no power over the balloon; that our condition is hopeless?”