As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find: the humourist had ceased to communicate with the _Beehive_. But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil. The hours in the daytime that he did not pass at work he spent as before, picking up knowledge at bookstalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out--sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster--London's classic land--and watching the vague lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the balustrade--seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose. As the river flowed between the world of roofs, and the roar of human passions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought--and all they knew of London was its shadow. CHAPTER XIV. There appeared in the _Beehive_ certain very truculent political papers--papers very like the tracts in the Tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the _Beehive_ than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the _Beehive_, and all its papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against "tyrans." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognised in the orator Mr Sprott the Tinker. The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr Sprott prudently vanished. Leonard learned then what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread. Slowly he walked back. "O, knowledge, knowledge!--powerless indeed!" he murmured. As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall--"Wanted, a few smart young men for India." A crimp accosted him--"You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on. "It has come back, then, to this. Brute physical force after all! O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again."