‘You speak, indeed,’ returned the plotter, with some evidence of warmth, ‘you speak, indeed, most ignorantly. Do you make nothing, then, of such a peril as we share this moment? Do you think it nothing to occupy a house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering to its fall?’ ‘Good God!’ ejaculated Somerset. ‘And when you speak of ease,’ pursued Zero, ‘in this age of scientific studies, you fill me with surprise. Are you not aware that chemicals are proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very devil? Do you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety? Do you observe the silver threads that mingle with my hair? Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on my brow—chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks! No, Mr. Somerset,’ he resumed, after a moment’s pause, his voice still quivering with sensibility, ‘you must not suppose the dynamiter’s life to be all gold. On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine. I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England, the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap like that of a child’s pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of so much time and plant! If,’ he concluded, musingly, ‘we had been merely able to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I could have remedied the peccant engine. But what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium. They propose, instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep off whole populations with the devastating typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical simplicity. I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune. And, for my small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb. Yes,’ he cried, with unshaken hope, ‘I will still continue, and, I feel it in my bosom, I shall yet succeed.’ ‘Two things I remark,’ said Somerset. ‘The first somewhat staggers me. Have you, then—in all this course of life, which you have sketched so vividly—have you not once succeeded?’ ‘Pardon me,’ said Zero. ‘I have had one success. You behold in me the author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.’ ‘But if I remember right,’ objected Somerset, ‘the thing was a _fiasco_. A scavenger’s barrow and some copies of the _Weekly Budget_—these were the only victims.’ ‘You will pardon me again,’ returned Zero with positive asperity: ‘a child was injured.’