so long, making me fear that
his anxiety to escape all suspicion might compel him to denounce me,
gave me a _mauvais quart d'heure_. I was instantaneously in an awful
funk, and I had a practical demonstration of the "_vox haesit in
faucibus_," for I was unable to reply to the good doctor in anything
but the faintest whisper, and my tongue clattered in my mouth, as dry
as a stick, in an instant. I threw the dispatches in the sink and took
the next train for Vienna, undisturbed by the train running off the
track in the night, in the greater anxiety of my position, and, after
making at the station of Vienna only a hasty lunch on a boiled sausage
and a roll, continued my journey by express until I was out of the
Austrian dominions, and stopped to sleep at Frankfort. My panic was
as unreasonable as my security had been, for there was no reason to
believe that Dr. Orzovensky would warn the authorities, or that I
could not have carried the dispatches back to Kossuth in safety. My
habitual courage was not the courage of one who realizes his danger
and faces it coolly, but that of constitutional inability to realize
what the danger is, however clearly it may be shown to him. As a habit
the realization of my danger only came to me when the danger itself
had gone by, and then I was frightened.

Arrived at London, I went to report to Kossuth, expecting a scene and
reproaches, when I was prepared to show him that the failure of the
mission was due to his having neglected to inform me that I was going
to a man wanted by the police, and in close hiding, so that my failure
to find him was probably due to the openness with which I made my
approaches, and to his not having then informed his correspondent that
I was on the ground expecting to see him, and that he must look out
for me. But he only exclaimed, with a tone of regret, "Three months
lost!" yet there was, probably, a reciprocal disapproval of our
methods of carrying on a conspiracy; for, while he was most gravely
disappointed at getting no result from his work and expenditure, no
doubt owing largely to my incompetence for that kind of service, I was
equally dissatisfied at being sent on an expedition which put my
life in imminent danger, with the minor perils of torture and long
imprisonment, provided with information utterly insufficient and
needlessly incomplete for the mission confided to me.

If Kossuth had cautioned me that his correspondent was in hiding and
wanted by t