vehicles, drawn by an electric motor which I re-charged every
morning, mostly from the turbine station in St. Pancras, once from a
steam-station with very small engine and dynamo, found in the Palace
Theatre, which gave little trouble, and once from a similar little
station in a Strand hotel. With these I visited West Ham and Kew,
Finchley and Clapham, Dalston and Marylebone; I exhausted London; I
deposited piles in the Guildhall, in Holloway Gaol, in the new pillared
Justice-hall of Newgate, in the Tower, in the Parliament-house, in St.
Giles' Workhouse, in the Crypt and under the organ of St. Paul's, in the
South Kensington Museum, in the Royal Agricultural Society, in
Whiteley's place, in the Trinity House, in Liverpool Street, in the
Office of Works, in the secret recesses of the British Museum; in a
hundred inflammable warehouses, in five hundred shops, in a thousand
private dwellings. And I timed them all for ignition at midnight of the
23rd April.

By five in the afternoon of the 22nd, when I left my train in Maida
Vale, and drove alone to the solitary house on high ground near
Hampstead Heath which I had chosen, the work was well finished.

* * * * *

The great morning dawned, and I was early a-stir: for I had much to do
that day.

I intended to make for the sea-shore the next morning, and had therefore
to choose a good petrol motor, store it, and have it in a place of
safety; I had also to drag another vehicle after me, stored with trunks
of time-fuses, books, clothes, and other little things.

My first journey was to Woolwich, whence I took all that I might ever
require in the way of mechanism; thence to the National Gallery, where I
cut from their frames the 'Vision of St. Helena,' Murillo's 'Boy
Drinking,' and 'Christ at the Column'; and thence to the Embassy to
bathe, anoint myself, and dress.

As I had anticipated, and hoped, a blustering spring gale was blowing
from the north.

Even as I set out from Hampstead, about 9 A.M., I had been able to guess
that some of my fuses had somehow anticipated the appointed hour: for I
saw three red hazes at various points in the air, and heard the far
vague booming of an occasional explosion; and by 11 A.M. I felt sure
that a large region of north-eastern London must be in flames. With the
solemn feelings of bridegrooms and marriage-mornings--with a flinching,
a flinching heart, God knows, yet a heart up-buoyed on thrilling joys--I