“Well, well, that is natural. Humor my crotchet just now, and perhaps I may humor yours a month or two hence. I think I could lay my hand on the fellow who blew you up.” “What, sir! Ah! tell me that, and I'll do as much philanthropy as you like--after--” “After you have punched your fellow-creature's head.” “But it is impossible, sir. How can you know? These acts are kept as secret as the grave.” “And how often has the grave revealed its secrets to observant men? Dr. Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a sexton turn up a skull. He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull, and had the murderess hung. She was safe from the sexton and the rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer. Well, the day you were blown up, I observed something, and arrived at a conclusion, by my art.” “What, physic?” “Oh, dear, no; my other art, my art of arts, that I don't get paid for; the art of putting myself in other people's places. I'll tell you. While you lay on the ground, in Mr. Cheetham's yard, I scanned the workmen's faces. They were full of pity and regret, and were much alike in expression--all but one. That one looked a man awakened from a dream. His face was wild, stupid, confused, astonished. 'Hallo!' said I, 'why are your looks so unlike the looks of your fellows?' Instantly I put myself in his place. I ceased to be the Democritus, or laughing philosopher of Hillsborough, and became a low uneducated brute of a workman. Then I asked this brute, viz, myself, why I was staring and glaring in that way, stupidly astonished, at the injured man? 'Were you concerned in the criminal act, ye blackguard?' said I to myself. The next step was to put myself in the place of the criminal. I did so; and I realized that I, the criminal, had done the act to please the Unions, and expecting the sympathy of all Union workmen to be with me. Also that I, being an ignorant brute, had never pictured to myself what suffering I should inflict. But what was the result? I now saw the sufferer, and did not like my own act; and I found all the sympathy of my fellows went with him, and that I was loathed and execrated, and should be lynched on the spot were I to own my act. I now whipped back to Dr. Amboyne with the theory thus obtained, and compared it with that face; the two fitted each other, and I saw the criminal before me.” “Good heavens! This is very deep.”