Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1878 - Inland voyage

126 An Inland Voyage.
a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven
with radiance, that it would sparkle like a point
of light for us. The village was dotted with
people with their heads in air ; and the children
were in a bustle all along the street and far up
the straight road that climbs the hill, where we
could still see them running in loose knots.
It was a balloon, we learned, which had left
Saint Qiientin at half-past five that evening.
Mighty composedly the majority of the grown
people took it. But we were English, and were
soon running up the hill with the best. Being
travellers ourselves in a small way, we would
fain have seen these other travellers alight.
The spectacle was over by the tim.e we gained
the top of the hill. All the gold had withered
out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.
Whither.? I ask myself; caught up into the
seventh heaven } or come safely to land some-
where in that blue uneven distance, into which