the slightest vibration will cause them to go off, and I therefore ask
you to listen in silence to what I have to say. I must particularly ask
you also not to stamp on the floor."

Before these remarks were concluded Simkins had slipped out by the back
entrance, and somehow his desertion seemed to have a depressing effect
upon the company, who looked upon the broken-up Professor with eyes of
wonder and apprehension.

The Professor drew towards him one of the boxes and opened the lid. He
dipped his one useful hand into the box and, holding it aloft, allowed
something which looked like wet sawdust to drip through his fingers.
"That, gentlemen," he said, with an air of the utmost contempt, "is
what is known to the world as dynamite. I have nothing at all to say
against dynamite. It has, in its day, been a very powerful medium
through which our opinions have been imparted to a listening world, but
its day is past. It is what the lumbering stage-coach is to the
locomotive, what the letter is to the telegram, what the sailing-vessel
is to the steamship. It will be my pleasant duty to-night to exhibit to
you an explosive so powerful and deadly that hereafter, having seen
what it can accomplish, you will have nothing but derision for such
simple and harmless compounds as dynamite and nitro-glycerine."

The Professor looked with kindly sympathy over his audience as he
allowed the yellow mixture to percolate slowly through his fingers back
into the box again. Ever and anon he took up a fresh handful and
repeated the action.

The Anarchists in the audience exchanged uneasy glances one with the
other.