and throw it into the middle of the square, but I am terribly afraid that I shan't have the pluck, and shall simply turn round and run away." Nobody who knew Forster could believe that he would ever have acted in any such fashion. I had my own small experience at this time of trial. Threatening letters were flying about, and I received a fair share of them, for I was at that time very obnoxious to the Irish party in Leeds. One evening, on going down to my office, which I entered from a narrow thoroughfare called Bank Street, I was startled by being suddenly called upon to halt when near the office door, whilst a policeman's lantern was flashed in my face. One of our workmen explained my identity to the officer, and I was allowed to pass. I then learned that the Leeds police had received information of a plot to blow up the _Mercury_ office, and they had, accordingly, posted guards round the building. I was in the habit of driving home every night, or rather every morning, to my residence at Headingley, and the police suggested that I should be accompanied by an officer; but I did not believe in my danger, and desired no such protection. In the depths of one winter's night, when a thaw was dissolving a heavy fall of snow, I had a great fright. I had left my cab, which had driven away, and was mounting the steps leading to the porch of my house, when I suddenly saw, lying on the half-melted snow against the door itself, a large bundle wrapped in sacking. I drew near it cautiously, and heard a curious ticking sound proceeding from it. "An infernal machine!" I exclaimed to myself, and I confess I was horribly frightened. The outer door of the porch was unlocked, and, opening it, I bounded inside, carefully avoiding the object which I suspected. I unlocked the inner door, and, entering the house, locked and barred it behind me. Then, when I got into my dining-room, reason asserted itself, and I felt heartily ashamed of my panic. If the thing were an infernal machine, it would certainly do a great deal of damage if it exploded where it lay. I strung my nerves up to the sticking-point, went out, unlocked the door, seized the mysterious package in my hands, and flung it as far as I could into a little shrubbery in the garden. There was no explosion such as I had expected. Nothing, indeed, happened; but when I got back to my dining-room, and saw my face in a mirror, I found it was as white as a sheet. The next morning I went out to look for the infernal machine. It was a coarse sack, filled with blocks of wood and sawdust, and I have a strong suspicion that it had been placed where I found it as a practical joke. The ticking which I had heard, and which had convinced me that I had to deal with an infernal machine, was evidently produced by the drip, drip of water from the bag on the step beneath it. Such were features in the lives of men more or less before the public eye in the years of the dynamite terror.