We should have done the horrid thing at night and let it work while we all slept in the tents, but the chemist warned us not to dream of attempting it in anything like dusk or darkness. Each person has to be told off to stand ready in one room with their allowance of vitriol, and the prussic acid safely fastened up in a paper bag, tied at the mouth with a long piece of string, so that you can drop it into the vitriol and get away before the fumes suffocate you; which happens in one and a half seconds exactly. Should you stumble in the dark over something, nothing can save you, though they tell the rescuers how to get on their hands and knees with their heads in a wet blanket, and crawl close to the floor, in the event of a friend being caught, and a cheerful illustration of four corpses in a row is appended. Six-and-eightpence is a very highly-strung man, and is already in a state of nervousness about the whole thing, bordering on hydrophobia or suicidal mania. Anyhow, he has been talking all the evening in a very despondent way, bequeathing things (such as the old Ratner safe in his office, his "Van Dam on Divorce," his book of trout flies, his _kaross_, etc.) to one or the other of us, "just in case anything happens," he says. And we are quite certain that were we to attempt to do this thing at night something would happen for certain. Six-and-eightpence would lose his head, and either lock himself or someone else into one of the rooms after the stuff had been mixed, forgetting which side of the door he was on, or something like that. Or the MacPhairson would be too long and too careful over his mixing and fall senseless; and then, however much we should like to, how could we leave him to die? One of us would have to get into a wet blanket (first pumping the water out of the well half a mile away, by the by) and go to his rescue, and, of course, be overpowered in turn. Someone else would then have to go to _them_, and soon it would be like the ten little nigger-boys--"And then there were none." So, talking it over--and the pasting-up of the house having taken us till long after dark--we decided to wait until the friendly daylight. We are now retiring to rest, and all bade each other "Good night" much as shipwrecked castaways would do on an open raft in mid-ocean, with sharks waiting for them, and only someone's blanket and each other left to eat. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't rather put up with the "moss--quitoes" than all this. February 29th.--I was aroused at daylight on the 21st by Veronica saying, in sepulchral tones, "The day has arrived, E----. Get up." I've always pictured that's how the warder rouses condemned criminals from their slumbers, after which somebody else appears with the cheerful query (as Jaikeran now did) as to what you would like for your last breakfast.