ed will employ their own
engines of destruction on one another. But I will be no party to the
destruction of defenceless towns and people who are not in arms
against us. If I am ordered to do that I tell you candidly that I
will not do it. I will blow the air-ship itself up first."

"The conditions are somewhat stringent, although the sentiments are
excellent," replied Colston; "still, of myself I can neither accept
nor reject them. That will be for the Executive to do. For my own
part I think that you will be able to arrive at a basis of agreement
on them. And now I think we have said all we can say for the present,
and so if you are ready we'll be off and satisfy my longing to see
the invention that is to make us the arbiters of war--when war comes,
which I fancy will not be long now."

Something in the tone in which these last words were spoken struck
Arnold with a kind of cold chill, and he shivered slightly as he said
in answer to Colston--

"I am ready when you are, and no less anxious than you to set eyes on
my model. I hope to goodness it is all safe! Do you know, when I am
away from it I feel just like a woman away from her first baby."

A few minutes later two of the most dangerous enemies of Society
alive were walking quietly along the Embankment towards Blackfriars,
smoking their cigars and chatting as conventionally as though there
were no such things on earth as tyranny and oppression, and their
necessarily ever-present enemies conspiracy and brooding revolution.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOUSE ON CLAPHAM COMMON.

Twenty minutes' walk took Arnold and Colston to the door of the
tenement-house in which the former had lived since his fast-dwindling
store of money had convinced him of the necessity of bringing his
expenses down to the lowest possible limit if he wished to keep up
the struggle with fate very much longer.

As they mounted the dirty, evil-smelling staircase, Colston said--

"Phew! Verily you are a hero of science if you have brought yourself
to live in a hole like this for a couple of years rather than give up
your dream, and grow fat on the loaves and fishes of
conventionality."

"This is a palace compared with some of the rookeries about here,"
replied Arnold, with a laugh. "The march of progress seems to have
left this half of London behind as hopeless. Ten years ago there were
a good many thousands of highly respectable mediocrities living on
this side of the river, but now I am