e breakfast-table.

"What is it, my love?" inquired his wife. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"Wrong? Oh! no," replied the Admiral grimly, "nothing--wrong.
Oblige me by listening to this, madam." He took up the paper and
read aloud:

"ANOTHER DYNAMITE PLOT.
A WHOLE TOWN DECEIVED--EXTRAORDINARY PROCEEDINGS.
ESCAPE OF THE SUSPECTED PERSONS.
THE DYNAMITE FIENDS STILL AT LARGE.

"The existence of another of these atrocious conspiracies aimed at
the security of our public buildings and the safety of peaceful
citizens, has been brought to light by certain recent occurrences at
the romantic little seaport town of Troy. We have reason to believe
that the suspicions of the police have been for some time aroused;
and it is to their unaccountable dilatoriness we owe it that the
conspirators have for the time made good their escape and still
continue to menace our lives and property. It appears that some
months back a couple, giving the names of the Honourable Mr. and Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys--"

["Really, Samuel, if you cannot eat an ordinary egg without
clattering the spoon in that unseemly manner, I must ask you to
suspend your meal until I have finished."]

"appeared at Troy as tenants of one of the most fashionable villa
residences in that town. The _elite_ [ahem] of the neighbourhood,
too easily cajoled [h'm], and little suspecting their villainous
designs, received the newcomers with open arms and a lamentable lack
of inquisitiveness."

"Well, really," put in Mrs. Buzza, "I don't know what they call
'inquisitiveness'; if a brass telescope--Why, Sam, dear, how pale you
are!"

"Through the gross carelessness, we can hardly bring ourselves to say
the connivance, of the Custom House officials, they were allowed to
land with impunity a considerable quantity of dynamite, with which on
Saturday night they decamped. Their disappearance remained
unsuspected up to a late hour on Sunday morning, when 'The Bower' was
visited, and (to borrow the words of the great master of prose)
_non sunt inventi_. The neatness with which the escape was executed
points to the disquieting conclusion that they did not want for
assistance."

"I'll ask you to excuse me," said Sam, rising abruptly and leaving
the room. A sick terror possessed his heart; visions of the dock and
the felon's cell followed him as he picked up his hat and crept into
the street. Outside, the morning