and blows a portion of our heads off.  After this, what is the use of being squeamish about the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction?  Years ago I remember making merry over a play of Dumas, called Kean, in which the “Coal-Hole Tavern” was represented on the Thames, with a fleet of pirate-ships moored alongside.  Pirate-ships?  Why not?  What a cavern of terror was this in Northumberland Street, with its splendid furniture covered with dust, its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits a grim “agent,” amusing himself by firing pistols, aiming at the unconscious mantel-piece, or at the heads of his customers!

After this, what is not possible?  It is possible Hungerford Market is mined, and will explode some day.  Mind how you go in for a penny ice unawares.  “Pray, step this way,” says a quiet person at the door.  You enter—­into a back room:—­a quiet room; rather a dark room.  “Pray, take your place in a chair.”  And she goes to fetch the penny ice.  Malheureux!  The chair sinks down with you—­sinks, and sinks, and sinks—­a large wet flannel suddenly envelopes your face and throttles you.  Need we say any more?  After Northumberland Street, what is improbable?  Surely there is no difficulty in crediting Bluebeard.  I withdraw my last month’s opinions about ogres.  Ogres?  Why not?  I protest I have seldom contemplated anything more terribly ludicrous than this “agent” in the dingy splendor of his den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of empty bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at the mantel-piece until his clients come in!  Is pistol-practice so common in Northumberland Street, that it passes without notice in the lodging-houses there?

We spake anon of good thoughts.  About bad thoughts?  Is there some Northumberland Street chamber in your heart and mine, friend:  close to the every-day street of life visited by daily friends:  visited by people on business; in which affairs are transacted; jokes are uttered; wine is drunk; through which people come and go; wives and children pass; and in which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment when he rises up and kills?  A farmer, say, has a gun over the mantel-piece in his room where he sits at his daily meals and rest:  caressing his children, joking with his friends, smoking his pipe in his calm.  One night the gun is taken down:  the farmer goes out:  and it is a murderer who comes back and puts the piece up and drinks by that fireside.  Was he a murderer yesterday when he was tossing the baby on his knee, and when his hands were playing with his little girl’s yellow hair?  Yesterday there was no blood on them at all:  they were shaken by honest men:  have done many a kind act in their time very likely.  He leans his head on one of them, the wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children are prattling as they did yesterday round the father’s knee at the fire, and Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead on the moor.  Think of the gulf between now and