danger and promised adventure. He had some slight preference for ballooning, this being his sixteenth ascent, including the time when the balloon burst, and the occupants of the car came rattling down from a height of three thousand feet, and were saved only by the fortuitous draping of the half emptied balloon, which prevented all the gas from escaping.
At half-past six we were still passing over the Turkey carpet, apparently of the same interminable pattern. Some miles ahead the level stretch was broken by clumps of trees, which presently developed into woods of considerable extent. It was growing dusk, and no town or railway station was near. Burnaby, assured of being too late for his dinner party, wanted to prolong the journey. But the farther the balloon went the longer would be the distance over which it would have to be brought back and Mr. Coxwell's assistant was commendably careful of his employer's purse. On approaching Highwood the balloon passed over a dense wood, in which there was some i
