It was a long while since I had thus enjoyed a quiet read. For several months past my life had been a ceaseless round of feverish activity. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had allowed myself to be strangely preoccupied and flustered by trifles. What were these important duties which had so absorbed me as to leave me no time for thought, for study, no time to live my own life? How had I come to give such undue importance to the publication of a paper which, after all, was read by a very few, and those few for the most part already blind believers in the ideas it advocated? Yet I told myself that the _Tocsin_ had done good work, and could yet do much. Besides, I had undertaken it, I must go on with it; life without an object would be intolerable. The slow hours passed, and when night came I felt thoroughly worn out and exhausted, and soon got to sleep. I awoke on Monday morning with a sense of impending misfortune hovering over me. I had taken refuge in sleep the previous night from a host of troublesome thoughts and perplexing doubts, and I now experienced the hateful sensation of returning consciousness, when one does not yet recollect fully the past, yet realises vaguely the re-awakening to suffering and action. I wanted to get to the office early that morning, for publishing day was near at hand and there was a lot of work to be finished. I felt that the drudgery of composing would be a relief to my over-strained nerves; so, without waiting for breakfast and the morning paper which I generally scanned before leaving home, I dressed rapidly and set out for the _Tocsin_. I had not gone many yards when my attention was attracted by the large placards pasted on the boards outside a newspaper shop:-- "Shocking outrage in Madrid. Attempt on the life of Spanish Prime-Minister--Many victims. Arrest of Anarchist Assassin. London Police on scent." Giannoli! The name flashed across my brain as I rushed into the shop and purchased the paper. My heart thumped with excitement as, standing in the shadow of some houses at the corner of the street, I hastily opened and folded the sheet and ran my eyes down the long column, freely interspersed with headlines.