“We’re as bright a set of idiots as could be got together in a lifetime!” And he declaimed, as if giving a lecture,—“We get into the way of looking for scientific explanations for everything, till we can’t use our eyes to see what’s staring us in the face as plainly as a hole in a ladder! My dear fellow-idiots, I regret to say that it only dawned across my woolly brains a few moments since that we have, the whole lot of us, spent five solid hours staring at nothing more nor less than _clouds with light on them_, thinking——” “Clouds!!” they all shrieked, without waiting to hear more, and, leaving the orator as if he were a pestilence, they made a tumbling rush for the windows. Now they had the idea, they saw distinctly that they were above a stratum of clouds which were faintly illumined from below, the light catching the upper portions as their movements allowed it points of entrance. There was no doubt about it! the more they gazed, the more certain it was, and the grim humour of the situation appealed to them as to Godfrey; they all laughed till they could not stand, some till they could not sit but rolled on the floor to join Godfrey, alternately wiping away tears and holding their aching sides. Anon they would look up at one another with pain-drawn features, and the sight of their companions in a similar state would send them off into fresh paroxysms of laughter. The joke, like the sun, was immense; not one of these intensely scientific men could be said to be without a sense of humour, and not one of them felt in any way ashamed or embarrassed to be utterly prostrated with amusement at his own blunder. But the laugh did come in, though they had to do it themselves, and “it’s a good thing to laugh, at any rate.”