ill be handed down to coming ages, and I shall be spoken of
as the first who endeavoured to save grey hairs from being brought
with sorrow to the grave."

I am now writing on board H.M. gunboat John Bright,--for the
tyrannical slaves of a modern monarch have taken me in the flesh
and are carrying me off to England, so that, as they say, all
that nonsense of a Fixed Period may die away in Britannula. They
think,--poor ignorant fighting men,--that such a theory can be made
to perish because one individual shall have been mastered. But no!
The idea will still live, and in ages to come men will prosper and be
strong, and thrive, unpolluted by the greed and cowardice of second
childhood, because John Neverbend was at one time President of
Britannula.

It occurred to me then, as I sat meditating over the tidings conveyed
to me by Abraham Grundle, that it would be well that I should see
Crasweller, and talk to him freely on the subject. It had sometimes
been that by my strength I had reinvigorated his halting courage.
This suggestion that he might run away as the day of his deposition
drew nigh,--or rather, that others might run away,--had been the
subject of some conversation between him and me. "How will it be," he
had said, "if they mizzle?" He had intended to allude to the possible
premature departure of those who were about to be deposited.

"Men will never be so weak," I said.

"I suppose you'd take all their property?"

"Every stick of it."

"But property is a thing which can be conveyed away."

"We should keep a sharp look-out upon themselves. There might be a
writ, you know, _ne exeant regno_. If we are driven to a pinch, that
will be the last thing to do. But I should be sorry to be driven to
express my fear of human weakness by any general measure of that
kind. It would be tantamount to an accusation of cowardice against
the whole empire."

Crasweller had only shaken his head. But I had understood him to
shake it on the part of the human race generally, and not on his own
behalf.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST BREAK-DOWN.

It was now mid-winter, and it wanted just twelve months to that 30th
of June on which, in accordance with all our plans, Crasweller was to
be deposited. A full year would, no doubt, suffice for him to arrange
his worldly affairs, and to see his daughter married; but it would
not more than suffice. He still went about his business with an
alacrity marvellous in one who was so soon