The good Samaritan who acted this neighbourly part towards the newly-arrived stranger was the only sister of a certain Colonel Strong, who had been an excellent and much respected officer of the Royal Artillery. Colonel Strong was the most humane and tender-hearted of men, and had been frequently known to remove a snail from a garden walk, lest it should get trodden under foot. He had made it the great object of his life to discover and perfect the most deadly of missiles for the destruction of his fellow-creatures, and had written a book on “Explosive Bombs,” which was known to all “gunners” as a work of extraordinary science and the highest authority, and it was the text-book on the subject in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. But Colonel Strong had done more than theorise and write. He had himself invented a marvellous shot, which he was prepared to warrant would go farther into an iron plate and oak backing than any other projectile known to military science. And this shot had the additional and paramount advantage over all others, that when it had got to the extreme end of its beneficent course, and had remained quiescent for five minutes, it would explode, and blow the ship or fort in which it was embedded into a hundred thousand atoms. When the French and the Russian and the United States Governments, and the Emperor of China, and the Prince of Monaco, heard of this wonderful product of modern civilisation, they severally offered the inventor vast sums for the secret of the invention; but Colonel Strong was a good and patriotic Englishman, and, rejecting all foreign offers with contempt and strong language, offered it to the English War Office. The War Office authorities had the offer under consideration for ten years, and seemed no nearer coming to any decision upon it at the end of that period than they had been at first. It happened, however, that Colonel Strong had a friend in the House of Commons who belonged to the Opposition Party, and this honourable gentleman asked the Secretary for War a vast number of very disagreeable questions on the subject of the Strong Projectile, and moved for the entire Correspondence. This could not be refused, and then it was discovered that it filled three entire Blue Books of the largest volume, the production of which made the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office and the Queen’s Printer very much regret that they had ever been born. The Secretary for War (who several times contemplated resigning his post) was next badgered into permitting a trial to be made (at the inventor’s expense), and a day was at length appointed for that purpose. Colonel Strong was in raptures, and, although a heavy man, could hardly help jumping for joy when the great day arrived. His Royal Highness the Field-Marshal Commanding in Chief, the Secretary for War, the successful M.P. (in volunteer uniform), Colonel Strong, several General officers and other military experts,