"Give it to him, Phil!" cried Coleman. "Hit him on the salt!" "Exactly!" continued Philip, taking a swallow of water from a golden cup, and addressing himself to Bromley. "When the salt was gone you thought you'd never enjoy another meal, didn't you?--and how is it now? You are honest enough to admit that you never knew what a keen razor-edge taste was before. I'll bet you a quart of double eagles, George, that you get more flavor out of a dish of common--" At that moment a bag of sand came through the branches of the tree which shaded the three soldiers as they talked. There was a dark shadow moving over the sunlit ground, and a rushing sound in the air above. Their own conversation, and the noise of the water pouring from the trough over the idle wheel and splashing on the stones, must have prevented their hearing human voices close at hand. Rushing out from under the trees, they saw a huge balloon sweeping over their heads. The enormous bag of silk, swaying and pulsating in the meshes of the netting, was a hundred feet above the plateau; but the willow basket, in which two men and one woman were seated, was not more than half that distance from the ground. The surprise, the whistling of the monster through the air, the snapping and rending of the drag-rope with its iron hook, which was tearing up the turf, and which in an instant more scattered the shingles on the roof of their house like chaff, and carried off some of their bedding which was airing there--all these things were so startling, and came upon them so suddenly, that they had but short opportunity to observe the human beings who came so near them. [Illustration: "RUSHING OUT FROM UNDER THE TREES, THEY SAW A HUGE BALLOON SWEEPING OVER THEIR HEADS."] Brief as the time was, the faces of the three strangers were indelibly impressed upon their memory, and no portion of their dress seen above the rim of the basket escaped their observation. The woman, who appeared to be perfectly calm and self-possessed, kissed her hand with a smile so enchanting, lighting a face which seemed to the soldiers to be a face of such angelic beauty, that they half doubted if she could really belong to the race of earthly women they had once known so intimately. The men were not in like manner attractive to their eyes, but seemed to be of that oily-haired, waxy-mustached, beringed, and professorish variety which suggested to them chiropodists or small theatrical managers.