"The queer thing," said Flora, "is that they were not surprised. The sight of you----" "Seen sideways in this shawl, and with my legs hidden by the stone here, I might pass for an elderly female junketer." "This is scarcely the hour for a picnic," answered my wise girl, "and decidedly not the weather." The sound of another footstep prevented my reply. This time the wayfarer was an old farmer-looking fellow in a shepherd's plaid and bonnet powdered with mist. He halted before us and nodded, leaning rheumatically on his staff. "A coarse moarnin'. Ye'll be from Leadburn, I'm thinkin'?" "Put it at Peebles," said I, making shift to pull the shawl close about my damning finery. "Peebles!" he said reflectively. "I've ne'er ventured so far as Peebles. I've contemplated it! But I was none sure whether I would like it when I got there. See here: I recommend ye no' to be lazin' ower the meat, gin ye'd drap in for the fun. A'm full late, mysel'!" He passed on. What could it mean? We hearkened after his tread. Before it died away, I sprang and caught Flora by the hand. "Listen! Heavens above us, what is _that_?" "It sounds to me like Gow's version of 'The Caledonian Hunt's Delight,' on a brass band." Jealous powers! Had Olympus conspired to ridicule our love, that we must exchange our parting vows to the public strains of "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight," in Gow's version and a semitone flat? For three seconds Flora and I (in the words of a later British bard) looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent. Then she darted to the path, and gazed along it down the hill. "We must run, Anne. There are more coming!" We left the scattered relics of breakfast, and, taking hands, scurried along the path northwards. A few yards, and with a sharp turn it led us out of the cutting and upon the hillside. And here we pulled up together with a gasp. Right beneath us lay a green meadow, dotted with a crowd of two or three hundred people; and over the nucleus of this gathering, where it condensed into a black swarm, as of bees, there floated, not only the dispiriting music of "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight," but an object of size and shape suggesting the Genie escaped from the Fisherman's Bottle, as described in M. Galland's ingenious "Thousand and One Nights." It was Byfield's balloon--the monster _Lunardi_--in process of inflation. "Confound Byfield!" I ejaculated in my haste. "Who is Byfield?" "An aeronaut, my dear, of bilious humour; which no doubt accounts for his owning a balloon striped alternately with liver-colour and pale blue, and for his arranging it and a brass band in the very line of my escape. That man dogs me like fate." I broke off sharply. "And after all, why not?" I mused. The next instant I swung round, as Flora uttered a piteous little cry; and there, behind us, in the outlet of the cutting, stood Major Chevenix and Ronald. The boy stepped forward, and, ignoring my bow, laid a hand on Flora's arm. "You will come home at once."