As we know, New Year’s Day, 1000, was reached without any disturbance in the laws of Nature. But this time the expectation of the catastrophe was not based on a doubtful interpretation of a text. It was a change to be applied to the earth’s equilibrium based on indisputable calculations, which the progress of the ballistic and mechanical sciences rendered quite possible. This time it was not the sea that would give back the dead, but the sea that would engulph millions of the living. Under these circumstances, the position of J. T. Maston became daily more critical. Mrs. Scorbitt trembled lest he should become the victim of the general mania. Sometimes she thought of advising him to speak the word which he so obstinately kept to himself. But she dared not, and she did well. It would have been to expose herself to a categorical refusal. The city of Baltimore was a prey to terror, and it became difficult to restrain the populace, who were being excited even unto madness by the newspapers, by the telegrams which they published from the four angles of the earth, to use the apocalyptic language of St John the Evangelist in the days of Domitian. Assuredly, if J. T. Maston had lived under that persecuting emperor, his business would soon have been settled. He would have been thrown to the beasts. But he would have contented himself with replying,— “I am there already!” But no matter what happened, he refused to reveal the position of place _x_, knowing well that if he divulged it Barbicane and Nicholl would be prevented from continuing their work. After all, there was something grand in this struggle between one man and the entire world. J. T. Maston increased in grandeur in the mind of Mrs. Scorbitt, and also in the opinion of his colleagues of the Gun Club. These gallant fellows were as obstinate as retired artillerymen, and never swerved from their support of Barbicane & Co. The secretary of the Gun Club reached such a height of celebrity that a number of persons even wrote to him, as they do to famous criminals, to obtain a few lines from the hand of the man who was going to upset the globe. This was all very fine, but it was more and more dangerous. The populace thronged day and night round the gaol of Baltimore. There was great shouting and much tumult. The mob would have lynched J. T. Maston there and then if they could; and the police saw the time was coming when they could no longer protect him. Desirous of satisfying the American mob, as well as the mob of other countries, the Washington Government decided to bring J. T. Maston to trial. With a jury selected from the terrified masses, “the affair would not hang about long,” to quote the words of Alcide, who felt a kind of sympathy for the calculator’s tenacity. On the 5th of September, the President of the Commission visited the prisoner in his cell.