There appeared in the "Beehive" certain very truculent political papers,
--papers very like the tracts in the tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed
them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the
"Beehive" than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last
were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the
manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home
Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the "Beehive" and all its
papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal
prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not
like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard,
unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he
found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not
new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations
against "tyrants." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the
orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker.

The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott
prudently vanished. Leonard learned, then, what had befallen, and again
saw himself without employment and the means of bread.

Slowly he walked back. "O knowledge, knowledge!---powerless, indeed!" he
murmured.

As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead
wall, "Wanted, a few smart young men for India."

A crimp accosted him. "You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have
stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on.

"It has come back then to this,--brute physical force after all! O Mind,