loose in a great thanksgiving that I had lived to see this
moment. It was then that he cried out in a loud voice:

"'I call Aurora to witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a
burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!' And I
saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals
sharpened to a point of burning flame.

"'Aurora!' he cried again, and with that enigmatic word on his lips was
incinerated in the vast and towering belch of the devouring element.

"It was among the most inspiring sights I have ever witnessed."

When Mr. Lavender had completed that record, whose actuality and wealth
of moving detail had greatly affected him, and marked it "For the
Press-Immediate," he felt very cold. It was, in fact, that hour of dawn
when a shiver goes through the world; and, almost with pleasurable
anticipation he took up his lighted candle and stole shivering out to his
pile, rising ghostly to the height of some five feet in the middle of the
dim lawn whereon a faint green tinge was coming with the return of
daylight. Having reached it, he walked round it twice, and readjusted
four volumes of the history of the war as stepping-stones to the top;
then lowering the candle, whose flame burned steadily in the stillness,
he knelt down in the grey dew and set fire to an article in a Sunday
paper. Then, sighing deeply, he returned to his little ladder and, with
some difficulty preserving his balance, mounted to the top, and sat down
with his legs towards the house and his eyes fixed on Aurora's
bedroom-window. He had been there perhaps ten minutes before he realized
that nothing was happening below him, and, climbing down again, proceeded
to the aperture where he had inserted the burning print. There, by the
now considerable daylight, he saw that the flame had gone out at the
words "The Stage is now set for the last act of this colossal world
drama." And convinced that Providence had intended that heartening
sentence to revive his somewhat drooping courage, he thought, "I, too,
shall be making history this morning," and relighting the journal, went
on his hands and knees and began manfully to blow the flames. . . . . .

Now the young lady in the adjoining castle, who had got out of bed,
happened, as she sometimes did, to go to the window for a look at the sun
rising over Parliament Hill. Attracted by the smell of burning paper she
saw Mr. Lavender in this act of blowing up the fla