Locking his desk, and replacing it within the trunk (but not before he had taken from a secret lining two printed handbills), he cautiously withdrew; looking back, as he went, at the pale face of the slumbering man, above whose head the dusty plumes that crowned the Maypole couch, waved drearily and sadly as though it were a bier.
Stopping on the staircase to listen that all was quiet, and to take off his shoes lest his footsteps should alarm any light sleeper who might be near at hand, he descended to the ground floor, and thrust one of his bills beneath the great door of the house.

That done, he crept softly back to his own chamber, and from the window let another fall--carefully wrapt round a stone to save it from the wind--into the yard below.
They were addressed on the back 'To every Protestant into whose hands this shall come,' and bore within what follows: 'Men and Brethren.

Whoever shall find this letter, will take it as a warning to join, without delay, the friends of Lord George Gordon.

There are great events at hand; and the times are dangerous and troubled.

Read this carefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else.