Consider, if you please. For six days I had been oscillating within a pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to this new apprehension like a needle in a compass-box. On the floor of the car, at my feet, lay a heap of plaid rugs and overcoats, from which, successively and painfully disinvolved, there emerged first a hand clutching a rusty beaver hat, next a mildly indignant face, in spectacles, and finally the rearward of a very small man in a seedy suit of black. He rose on his knees, his finger-tips resting on the floor, and contemplated the aeronaut over his glasses with a world of reproach. "I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!" Byfield mopped a perspiring brow. "My dear sir," he stammered, "all a mistake--no fault of mine--explain presently"; then, as one catching at an inspiration, "Allow me to introduce you. Mr. Dalmahoy, Mr.----" "My name is Sheepshanks," said the little man stiffly. "But you'll excuse me----" Mr. Dalmahoy interrupted with a playful cat-call. "Hear, hear! _Silence!_ 'His name is Sheepshanks. On the Grampian Hills his father kept his flocks--a thousand sheep,' and, I make no doubt, shanks in proportion. Excuse you, Sheepshanks? My _dear_ sir! At this altitude one shank was more than we had a right to expect: the plural multiplies the obligation." Keeping a tight hold on his hysteria, Dalmahoy steadied himself by a rope and bowed. "And I, sir,"--as Mr. Sheepshanks' thoroughly bewildered gaze travelled around and met mine--"I, sir, am the Vicomte Anne de Keroual de Saint-Yves, at your service. I haven't a notion how or why you come to be here: but you seem likely to be an acquisition. On my part," I continued, as there leapt into my mind the stanza I had vainly tried to recover in Mrs. McRankine's sitting-room, "I have the honour to refer you to the inimitable Roman, Flaccus-- "'Virtus, recludens immeritis mori Coelum negata temptat iter via, Coetusque vulgares et udam Spernit humum fugiente penna' --you have the Latin, sir?" "Not a word." He subsided upon the pile of rugs and spread out his hands in protest. "I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!" "Then in a minute or so I will do myself the pleasure of construing," said I, and turned to scan the earth we were leaving--I had not guessed how rapidly. We contemplated it from the height of six hundred feet--or so Byfield asserted after consulting his barometer. He added that this was a mere nothing: the wonder was the balloon had risen at all with one-half of the total folly of Edinburgh clinging to the car. I passed the possible inaccuracy and certain ill-temper of this calculation. He had (he explained) made jettison of at least a hundred-weight of sand ballast. I could only hope it had fallen on my cousin. To me, six hundred feet appeared a very respectable eminence. And the view was ravishing.