all back, to find, to my vexation, that the packet was still
outside; but by kneeling down and passing my hand under, I was able to
secure it, though I trembled all the while for fear my hand should have
been seen.

For fear of this, I thrust the packet into my breast, and lay down on my
couch, listening. All was still, so I took out the packet quickly,
noting that it was slightly heavy, but I attributed this to a stone put
in with a note to make it easy for throwing in at the window.

"Oh!" I ejaculated, as my trembling fingers undid the string, "if this
is another of Dost's letters!"

But it was not, and there was no scrap of writing inside the dirty piece
of paper. Instead, there was another tiny packet, and something rolled
in a scrap of paper.

I opened this first, and found a piece of steel about an inch and a half
long, and after staring at it for a few moments, I thrust it into my
pocket, and began to open the tiny packet which evidently contained some
kind of seed.

"Not meant for me," I said to myself, sadly, as I opened the stiff
paper, and--

I lay there staring at the fine black seed, and ended by moistening a
finger, and taking up a grain to apply to my tongue.

The result was unmistakable. I needed no teaching there, for I had had
a long education in such matters.

It was gunpowder, and I laughed at myself for thinking that it was a
kind of seed, though seed it really might be called--of destruction.

"Yes; it's meant for some one else," I thought, as I carefully refolded
the black grains in their envelope, and took out the piece of steel
again, to turn it over in my hands, and notice that one end was fairly
sharp, while the other was broken, and showed the peculiar crystalline
surface of a silvery grey peculiar to good steel.

"Why, it's the point of a bayonet," I said to myself; and then I sat
thinking, regularly puzzled at the care taken to wrap up that bit of
steel and the powder.

"What does it mean?" I said, or does it mean anything? "Some children
playing at keeping shop, perhaps," I said; "and when they were tired,
they threw the packet in at the first window they saw. Just the things
soldiers' children would get hold of to play with."

"But there are no children here," I said to myself, as I began to grow
more excited, and the more so I grew, the less able I was to make out
that which later on appeared to be simplicity itself.

"The point of a bayonet in one, and some grain