The man bowed, and very little further conversation took place, while Lieberg undressed, and retired to bed. His last words were, "Leave the light burning." As soon as the man was gone, Lieberg rose from his bed again, carefully cut the sheet of note-paper on which he had written to Helen in two, separating the part containing his enquiry from Helen's reply, burnt the former part, and then gazed steadfastly upon the other, repeating--"Whenever I like! whenever I like!--I like this very night!--This shall justify me;" and putting the paper into his desk, he extinguished the light, and retired to bed again, but not to sleep. CHAPTER XXV. For a short space we must not only leave sweet Helen Barham in the house of Yelverly, but Lieberg, with all machinations in his head, and turn to schemes of a different kind, and at a different spot. It was in the back room of a low public house that, on the very day which witnessed Lieberg's arrival in London from the town of Deal, there sat together four as powerful and determined-looking fellows as ever perhaps met, with a view of consulting upon the grand purpose of cutting a purse, or proving that there are other people, as well as the little god of love, who can laugh at locksmiths. In the chair--for it will always be found, in civil and political matters alike, that the meetings which assemble for the purpose of setting all laws and regulations at defiance, must have their laws and regulations likewise--in the chair of this gallant and respectable assembly, was placed that worthy gentleman, Harry Martin, whom we have had the honour of bringing before our readers on more than one occasion. On his right was a gentleman who was delivering himself with a great deal more eloquence than is usually met with, either on the hustings or the Commons House of Parliament--though, like the oratory of those places, his had its peculiar characteristics, which suited it to the auditory who were to hear it--he was delivering himself, I say, of a speech, to which I can only do partial justice, both from a want of a thorough knowledge of the copious tongue in which it was composed; and also from lack of space to give all the figures of rhetoric, the tropes, the metaphors, the similes, with which it was ornamented. The tendency of the speech, however, was to incite his hearers to undertake a great enterprise; and an expedition against Carthage, or a war against Philip, was never debated with more vehemence and animation.