had not yet quitted the scene. The witches' battle had tended upward,
and it had ended several hundred feet above the level of the cloud,
which was apparently sinking. The downward course of the combatants'
fall was therefore arrested, and they found themselves still
interlocked, prostrate and embedded, with their eyes and mouths full of
woolly wisps of cloud.

Our witch was the first to recover herself. She stood up and brushed
herself, remarking: "By jove, that parachute cloak of yours is a great
dodge. I wish I'd thought of it. I always keep my full-dress togs put
away, like the ass that I am. A stitch or two, and a few lengths of
whalebone would have done the trick."

The German was an older woman, and less adaptable to the strange chances
of War. She was silent for a few minutes, seated in the small crater
made in the cloud by her fall. She was not exactly ugly. She had the
sort of face about which one could not help feeling that one could have
done it better oneself, or at least that one could have taken more
trouble. It seemed moulded--even kneaded--carelessly, in very soft
material. Beneath her open cloak her dress was of the ordinary German
_Reform-Kleid_ type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance of
those who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now,
probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed,
with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing each other round it.

The witches faced each other for some seconds. A long way away they
could hear the spitting and crackling sound of the two broomsticks
fighting. Looking up, they could see the combatants, like black comets
in collision. Our witch, who had good sight, saw that the enemy
broomstick was upper-most, and that the writhing Harold was being shaken