When this succulent repast had been disposed of towards 3 A.M. (all the _Tocsin_ workers had admirable digestions) a brief respite from work ensued, during which Beppe sang pieces of Italian opera, accompanied by Gnecco on his mandolin, and M'Dermott treated us to brief recitations from Shakespeare. Much stamping and gesticulation accompanied, I remember, the soliloquy of Hamlet, and our flesh crept at the witches' incantations from "Macbeth." The old cobbler delighted in Shakespeare and dictionaries, between the perusal of which he spent most of his time. "Like Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale,'" he said to me one day, "I am a 'snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,' and during the riots of 18--I snapped up a sufficient number of these to enable me to set myself up with a small library, and I did no work during eighteen months, devoting my entire time to Shakespeare and Johnson's Dictionary." Sometimes a phrenologist who had strayed into our midst would follow on with a brief phrenological séance, and nothing afforded the comrades more satisfaction than to be informed that their bumps showed undoubted criminal propensities. Then again the heavy roll of the machine would drown all lesser noises with its monotonous grinding, as the most resolute and earnest among us returned undaunted to the fray, whilst others, less energetic, curled up on the floor in varying uncomfortable attitudes about the office--inside the dormitory shed and out, propped against posts and type-racks, or stretched on stacks of paper--and slumbered in blissful ignorance of the future fortunes of the _Tocsin_. CHAPTER VIII THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE May-Day was at hand, and we had been working all night at the office of the _Tocsin_ in order to have the paper ready in time to distribute to the provincial groups. Since Friday morning I had hardly left the office at all--merely going home for dinner and returning at once to the fray--and by four o'clock Sunday morning we had rolled off the last of the five thousand copies of the _Tocsin_, which, along with two thousand leaflets drawn up by myself and Armitage, were ready for distribution. The 1st of May fell on the following Wednesday, and we had for once the satisfaction of knowing that we had taken Time by the forelock.