was
afterwards asserted, on good authority, that he had been seen the same
evening on board a vessel bound for America; and the most reasonable
conjecture appeared to be, that his native discrimination, at once
perceiving the weight of evidence for the prosecution, had led him,
during the tumult incident on the explosion, to effect an escape.
Certain it is that the Hall at Clapton knew him no more.

Meanwhile, outside the station, amid a medley of blackened officials,
disintegrated portions of railway carriages and book-stalls, Salvation
Army captains, converted reprobates, policemen, cabmen, and orange
vendors, was found a Nihilist! Once a Nihilist, but a Nihilist no
longer. With a threepenny hymn-book in one hand and a black bag in the
other, filled, not with dangerous explosives, but with a whole
arsenal of tracts, 'War Crys,' hymn-books, addresses to swearers
and Sabbath-breakers, and other devotional literature, he was calmly
spouting:

'Convulsions shake the solid world, My faith shall never yield to fear!'

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 ownersh