It may not be amiss, here, to say a few words as regards his subsequent history, as related by the Owl. After that somewhat untoward incident, he was not warmly received into the ranks of the Salvation Army. A coldness sprang up which, though not inexplicable, had the unfortunate effect of causing our Nihilist to renounce connection with that body. The influences which they had brought to bear upon him, however, did not so easily pass away, and it was in the continued glow of pious enthusiasm that he joined a Dissenting Society, in which respectability and fervour were happily combined, and which, accusing the Salvation Army of the fervour without the respectability, regarded the Nihilist as an interesting martyr of unjust suspicion. For two months he remained in this society, and rose to the post of deacon, or what corresponded to deacon in their system; but at the end of that time his native bias proved too strong for him. With singular injudiciousness he brought to the Sunday evening service a hymn-book carefully constructed, including the hymns of the society, and also a small but superlatively powerful block of explosive material, arranged to go off at the moment in which the collection was being taken up. So confident was he of the excellent workmanship of this article that he did not scruple even to write his name in it, and to leave it in the pew, assured that, once exploded, no trace of its ownership would remain. He then left before the collection—a thing which he had been repeatedly known to do before, and which struck the congregation with no alarm. But, from the pew behind, an eye was upon him. It was the eye of the Professor. What was the Professor doing there? The answer was simple enough. He was writing a book on 'Competition, and the Survival of the Fittest, as displayed in Modern Sectarianism,' and he had come to this dissenting place of worship in quest of information. Always ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, he entered the Nihilist's pew the moment that individual left it, and began to scan the leaves of the hymn-book. To his infinite amazement, on turning over page 227, he came upon a cunning piece of machinery, not a musical-box, like those one comes to unexpectedly in the midst of photograph albums, but a _chef d'œuvre_ of Donovan's own, smouldering away at a great rate. The time was just up; the collection-boxes were being handed round; instant destruction seemed inevitable, when, to the amazement of the congregation, the Professor, starting up, rushed to the altar, and, with _the cool forethought and intrepidity_ so eminently characteristic of that gifted man, dropped the hymn-book into the large font, then full of water. The ignited wick ceased to smoulder; the peril was averted.