"Let us go, Phillip, no one knows where--not even ourselves. Let Heaven guide us in our choice of a resting-place. Let us vanish from this village as if we had never lived in it. Let us go and be forgotten." He looked at me in astonishment, and replied in a joking way:-- "The only means I know of to carry out your wishes to the letter, would be a nocturnal departure, as I arrived--that is to say, in my balloon." "Yes, Phillip, yes!" I exclaimed eagerly, "in your balloon, to-night, in your balloon!" * * * * * That night, in a field by the reservoir of the gas-works of Nettledene, the balloon was inflated, and the car loaded with stores for our journey to unknown lands. The great fabric swayed and struggled in the strong breeze that blew over the hills, and it was with some difficulty that Phillip and I took our seats. All was in readiness, when Phillip, searching the car with a lantern, discovered that we had not with us the bundle of rugs and wraps which I had got ready for carrying off. "Keep her steady, boys!" he cried. "I must run back to the house." And he leapt from the car and disappeared in the darkness. It was weird to crouch there alone, with the great balloon swaying over my head, each plunge threatening to dislodge me from the seat to which I clung, the cords and the wicker-work straining and creaking, and the swish of the silk sounding like the hiss of a hundred snakes. It was alarming in no small degree to know how little prevented me from shooting up solitarily to take an indefinite place among the stars. I confess that I was nervous, but I only called to the men who were holding the car to please take care and not let me go without Mr. Rutley. The words were scarcely out of my mouth when a man, whom we all thought was he, climbed into the car and hoarsely told them to let go. The order was obeyed and the earth seemed to drop away slowly beneath us as the balloon rose and drifted away before the wind. "You haven't the rugs, after all!" I exclaimed to my companion. He turned and flung his arms about me, and the voice of Kenneth Moore it was that replied to me:-- "I have _you_. I swore I would have you, and I've got you at last!" In an instant, as I perceived that I was being carried off from my husband by the very man I had been trying to escape, I seized the grapnel that lay handy and flung it over the side. It was attached to a long stout cord which was fastened to the body of the car, and by the violent jerks that ensued I knew that I was not too late to snatch at an anchorage and the chance of a rescue. The balloon, heavily ballasted, was drifting along near the ground with the grappling-iron tearing through hedges and fences and trees, right in the direction of our farm. How I prayed that it might again strike against the house as it did with Phillip, and that he might be near to succour me!