"How would you help it?" he asked.

"I would call the civilized nations together in council, and devise an international paper money, to be issued by the different nations, but to be receivable as legal tender for all debts in all countries. It should hold a fixed ratio to population, never to be exceeded; and it should be secured on all the property of the civilized world, and acceptable in payment of all taxes, national, state and municipal, everywhere. I should declare gold and silver legal tenders only for debts of five dollars or less. An international greenback that was good in New York, London, Berlin, Melbourne, Paris and Amsterdam, would be good anywhere. The world, released from its iron band, would leap forward to marvelous prosperity; there would be no financial panics, for there could be no contraction; there would be no more torpid 'middle ages,' dead for lack of currency, for the money of a nation would expand, pari passu, side by side with the growth of its population. There would be no limit to the development of mankind, save the capacities of the planet; and even these, through the skill of man, could be increased a thousand-fold beyond what our ancestors dreamed of. The very seas and lakes, judiciously farmed, would support more people than the earth now maintains. A million fish ova now go to waste where one grows to maturity.

"The time may come when the slow processes of agriculture will be largely discarded, and the food of man be created out of the chemical elements of which it is composed, transfused by electricity and magnetism. We have already done something in that direction in the way of synthetic chemistry. Our mountain ranges may, in after ages, be leveled down and turned into bread for the support of the most enlightened, cultured, and, in its highest sense, religious people that ever dwelt on the globe. All this is possible if civilization is preserved from the destructive power of the ignorant and brutal plutocracy, who now threaten the safety of mankind. They are like the slave-owners of 1860; they blindly and imperiously insist on their own destruction; they strike at the very hands that would save them."

"But," said Maximilian, "is it not right and necessary that the intellect of the world should rule the world?"

"Certainly," I replied; "but what is intellect? It is breadth of comprehension; and this implies gentleness and love. The man whose scope of thought takes in the created world, and apprehends man's place in nature, cannot be cruel to his fellows. Intellect, if it is selfish, is wisely selfish. It perceives clearly that such a shocking abomination as our present condition cannot endure. It knows that a few men cannot safely batten down the hatches over the starving crew and passengers, and then riot in drunken debauchery on the deck. When the imprisoned wretches in the hold become desperate enough—and it is simply a question of time—they will fire the ship or scuttle it, and the fools and their victims will all perish together. True intellect is broad, fore-sighted, wide-ranging, merciful, just. Some one said of old that 'the gods showed what they thought of riches by the kind of people they gave them to.' It is not the poets, the philosophers, the philanthropists, the historians, the sages, the scholars, the really intellectual of any generation who own the great fortunes. No; but there is a subsection of the brain called cunning; it has nothing to do with elevation of mind, or purity of soul, or knowledge, or breadth of view; it is the lowest, basest part of the intellect. It is the trait of foxes, monkeys, crows, rats and other vermin. It delights in holes and subterranean shelters; it will not disdain filth; it is capable of lying, stealing, trickery, knavery. Let me give you an example:

"It is recorded that when the great war broke out in this country against slavery, in 1861, there was a rich merchant in this city, named A. T. Stewart. Hundreds of thousands of men saw in the war only the great questions of the Union and the abolition of human bondage—the freeing of four millions of human beings, and the preservation of the honor of the flag; and they rushed forward eager for the fray. They were ready to die that the Nation and Liberty might live. But while their souls were thus inflamed with great and splendid emotions, and they forgot home, family, wealth, life, everything, Stewart, the rich merchant, saw simply the fact that the war would cut off communication between the North and the cotton-producing States, and that this would result in a rise in the price of cotton goods; and so, amid the wild agitations of patriotism, the beating of drums and the blaring of trumpets, he sent out his agents and bought up all the cotton goods he could lay his hands on. He made a million dollars, it is said, by this little piece of cunning. But if all men had thought and acted as Stewart did, we should have had no Union, no country, and there would be left to-day neither honor nor manhood in all the world. The nation was saved by those poor fellows who did not consider the price of cotton goods in the hour of America's crucial agony. Their dust now billows the earth of a hundred battlefields; but their memory will be kept sweet in the hearts of men forever! On the other hand, the fortune of the great merchant, as it did no good during his life, so, after his death, it descended upon an alien to his blood; while even his wretched carcass was denied, by the irony of fate, rest under his splendid mausoleum, and may have found its final sepulchre in the stomachs of dogs!

"This little incident illustrates the whole matter. It is not Intellect that rules the world of wealth, it is Cunning. Muscle once dominated mankind—the muscle of the baron's right arm; and Intellect had to fly to the priesthood, the monastery, the friar's gown, for safety. Now Muscle is the world's slave, and Cunning is the baron—the world's master.

"Let me give you another illustration: Ten thousand men are working at a trade. One of them conceives the scheme of an invention, whereby their productive power is increased tenfold. Each of them, we will say, had been producing, by his toil, property worth four dollars and a half per day, and his wages were, we will say, one dollar and a half per day. Now, he is able with the new invention to produce property worth forty-five dollars per day. Are his wages increased in due proportion, to fifteen dollars per day, or even to five dollars per day? Not at all. Cunning has stepped in and examined the poor workman's invention; it has bought it from him for a pittance; it secures a patent—a monopoly under the shelter of unwise laws. The workmen still get their $1.50 per day, and Cunning pockets the remainder. But this is not all: If one man can now do the work of ten, then there are nine men thrown out of employment. But the nine men must live; they want the one man's place; they are hungry; they will work for less; and down go wages, until they reach the lowest limit at which the workmen can possibly live. Society has produced one millionaire and thousands of paupers. The millionaire cannot eat any more or wear any more than one prosperous yeoman, and therefore is of no more value to trade and commerce; but the thousands of paupers have to be supported by the tax-payers, and they have no money to spend, and they cannot buy the goods of the merchants, or the manufacturers, and all business languishes. In short, the most utterly useless, destructive and damnable crop a country can grow is—millionaires. If a community were to send. to India and import a lot of man-eating tigers, and turn them loose on the streets, to prey on men, women and children, they would not inflict a tithe of the misery that is caused by a like number of millionaires. And there would be this further disadvantage: the inhabitants of the city could turn out and kill the tigers, but the human destroyers are protected by the benevolent laws of the very people they are immolating on the altars of wretchedness and vice."

"But what is your remedy?" asked Max.

"Government," I replied; "government—national, state and municipal—is the key to the future of the human race.

"There was a time when the town simply represented cowering peasants, clustered under the shadow of the baron's castle for protection. It advanced slowly and reluctantly along the road of civic development, scourged forward by the whip of necessity. We have but to expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the world. Man separated is man savage; man gregarious is man civilized. A higher development in society requires that this instrumentality of co-operation shall be heightened in its powers. There was a time when every man provided, at great cost, for the carriage of his own letters. Now the government, for an infinitely small charge, takes the business off his hands. There was a time when each house had to provide itself with water. Now the municipality furnishes water to all. The same is true of light. At one time each family had to educate its own children; now the state educates them. Once every man went armed to protect himself. Now the city protects him by its armed police. These hints must be followed out. The city of the future must furnish doctors for all; lawyers for all; entertainments for all; business guidance for all. It will see to it that no man is plundered, and no man starved, who is willing to work."

"But," said Max, "if you do away with interest on money and thus scatter coagulated capital into innumerable small enterprises, how are you going to get along without the keen-brained masters of business, who labor gigantically for gigantic personal profits; but who, by their toll and their capital, bring the great body of producers into relation with the great body of consumers? Are these men not necessary to society? Do they not create occasion and opportunity for labor? Are not their active and powerful brains at the back of all progress? There may be a thousand men idling, and poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood: along comes one of these shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the trees and the ox-hides of the farmers' cattle, and he starts a tannery. He may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets to work; but has he not done more? Is not his intellect immeasurably more valuable than all those unthinking muscles?"

"There is much force in your argument," I replied, "and I do not think that society should discourage such adventurers. But the muscles of the many are as necessary to the man you describe as his intellect is to the muscles; and as they are all men together there should be some equity in the distribution of the profits. And remember, we have gotten into a way of thinking as if numbers and wealth were everything. It is better for a nation to contain thirty million people, prosperous, happy and patriotic, than one hundred millions, ignorant, wretched and longing for an opportunity to overthrow all government. The over-population of the globe will come soon enough. We have no interest in hurrying it. The silly ancestors of the Americans called it 'national development' when they imported millions of foreigners to take up the public lands, and left nothing for their own children.

"And here is another point: Men work at first for a competence—for enough to lift them above the reach of want in those days which they know to be rapidly approaching, when they can no longer toil. But, having reached that point, they go on laboring for vanity—one of the shallowest of the human passions. The man who is worth $ 100,000 says to himself, 'There is Jones; he is worth $500,000; he lives with a display and extravagance I cannot equal. I must increase my fortune to half a million.' Jones, on the other hand, is measuring himself against Brown, who has a million. He knows that men cringe lower to Brown than they do to him. He must have a million—half a million is nothing. And Brown feels that he is overshadowed by Smith, with his ten millions; and so the childish emulation continues. Men are valued, not for themselves, but for their bank account. In the meantime these vast concentrations of capital are made at the expense of mankind. If, in a community of a thousand persons, there are one hundred millions of wealth, and it is equally divided between them, all are comfortable and happy. If, now, ten men, by cunning devices, grasp three-fourths of all this wealth, and put it in their pockets, there is but one-fourth left to divide among the nine hundred and ninety, and they are therefore poor and miserable. Within certain limits accumulation in one place represents denudation elsewhere.

"And thus, under the stimulus of shallow vanity," I continued, "a rivalry of barouches and bonnets—an emulation of waste and extravagance—all the powers of the minds of men are turned—not to lift up the world, but to degrade it. A crowd of little creatures—men and women—are displayed upon a high platform, in the face of mankind, parading and strutting about, with their noses in the air, as tickled as a monkey with a string of beads, and covered with a glory which is not their own, but which they have been able to purchase; crying aloud: 'Behold what I have got!' not, 'Behold what I am!'

"And then the inexpressible servility of those below them! The fools would not recognize Socrates if they fell over him in the street; but they can perceive Crœsus a mile off; they can smell him a block away; and they will dislocate their vertebrae abasing themselves before him. It reminds one of the time of Louis XIV. in France, when millions of people were in the extremest misery—even unto starvation; while great grandees thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the king to bed, or take off his dirty socks. And if a common man, by any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt as if he had looked into heaven and beheld Divinity creating worlds. Oh, it is enough to make a man loathe his species."

"Come, come," said Maximilian, "you grow bitter. Let us go to dinner before you abolish all the evils of the world, or I shall be disposed to quit New York and buy a corner lot in Utopia."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COUNCIL OF THE OLIGARCHY

Precisely as Rudolph had forecast, things came to pass. I arrived at the palace of the Prince at half past six; at half past seven, my ordinary suit was covered with a braided livery, and I accompanied Rudolph to the council-chamber. We placed the table, chairs, pens, ink, paper, etc., in order. Watching our opportunity, we drew aside a heavy box in which grew a noble specimen of the cactus grandiflorus in full bloom, the gorgeous flowers just opening with the sunset, and filling the chamber with their delicious perfume. I crawled through the opening; took off my liveried suit; handed it back to Rudolph; he pushed the box into its place again; I inserted the hooks in their staples, and the barricade was complete. With many whispered injunctions and directions he left me. I heard him go out and lock the door—not the door by which we had entered—and all was silence.

There was room, by doubling up my limbs, Turk-fashion, to sit down in the inclosure. I waited. I thought of Estella. Rudolph had assured me that she had not been disturbed. They were waiting for hunger to compel her to eat the drugged food. Then I wondered whether we would escape in safety. Then my thoughts dwelt on the words she had spoken of me, and I remembered the pleased look upon her face when we met in Rudolph's room, and my visions became very pleasant. Even the dead silence and oppressive solitude of the two great rooms could not still the rapid beatings of my heart. I forgot my mission and thought only of Estella and the future.

I was recalled to earth and its duties by the unlocking of the farther door. I heard Rudolph say, as if in answer to a question:

"Yes, my lord, I have personally examined the rooms and made sure that there are no spies concealed anywhere."

"Let me see," said the Prince; "lift up the tapestry."

I could hear them moving about the council-chamber, apparently going around the walls. Then I heard them advancing into the conservatory. I shrank down still lower; they moved here and there among the flowers, and even paused for a few moments before the mass of flowering cacti.

"That flagelliformis," said the Prince, "looks sickly. The soil is perhaps too rich. Tell the gardener to change the earth about it."

"I shall do so, my lord," said Rudolph; and to my great relief they moved off. In a few minutes I heard them in the council-chamber. With great caution I rose slowly. A screen of flowers had been cunningly placed by Rudolph between the cacti and that apartment. At last, half-stooping, I found an aperture in the rich mass of blossoms. The Prince was talking to Rudolph. I had a good view of his person. He was dressed in an evening suit. He was a large man, somewhat corpulent; or, as Rudolph had said, bloated. He had a Hebraic cast of countenance; his face seemed to be all angles. The brow was square and prominent, projecting at the corners; the nose was quite high and aquiline; the hair had the look of being dyed; a long, thick black mustache covered his upper lip, but it could not quite conceal the hard, cynical and sneering expression of his mouth; great bags of flesh hung beneath the small, furtive eyes. Altogether the face reminded me of the portraits of Napoleon the Third, who was thought by many to have had little of Napoleon in him except the name.

There was about Prince Cabano that air of confidence and command which usually accompanies great wealth or success of any kind. Extraordinary power produces always the same type of countenance. You see it in the high-nosed mummied kings of ancient Egypt. There is about them an aristocratic hauteur which even the shrinking of the dry skin for four thousand years has not been able to quite subdue. We feel like taking off our hats even to their parched hides. You see it in the cross-legged monuments of the old crusaders, in the venerable churches of Europe; a splendid breed of ferocious barbarians they were, who struck ten blows for conquest and plunder where they struck one for Christ. And you can see the same type of countenance in the present rulers of the world—the great bankers, the railroad presidents, the gigantic speculators, the uncrowned monarchs of commerce, whose golden chariots drive recklessly over the prostrate bodies of the people.

And then there is another class who are everywhere the aides and ministers of these oppressors. You can tell them at a glance—large, coarse, corpulent men; red-faced, brutal; decorated with vulgar taste; loud-voiced, selfish, self-assertive; cringing sycophants to all above them, slave-drivers of all below them. They are determined to live on the best the world can afford, and they care nothing if the miserable perish in clusters around their feet. The howls of starvation will not lessen one iota their appetite or their self-satisfaction. These constitute the great man's world. He mistakes their cringings, posturings and compliments for the approval of mankind. He does not perceive how shallow and temporary and worse than useless is the life he leads; and he cannot see, beyond these well-fed, corpulent scamps, the great hungry, unhappy millions who are suffering from his misdeeds or his indifference.

While I was indulging in these reflections the members of the government were arriving. They were accompanied by servants, black and white, who, with many bows and flexures, relieved them of their wraps and withdrew. The door was closed and locked. Rudolph stood without on guard.

I could now rise to my feet with safety, for the council-chamber was in a blaze of electric light, while the conservatory was but partially illuminated.

The men were mostly middle-aged, or advanced in years. They were generally large men, with finely developed brows—natural selection had brought the great heads to the top of affairs. Some were cleancut in feature, looking merely like successful business men; others, like the Prince, showed signs of sensuality and dissipation, in the baggy, haggard features. They were unquestionably an able assembly. There were no orators among them; they possessed none of the arts of the rostrum or the platform. They spoke sitting, in an awkward, hesitating manner; but what they said was shrewd and always to the point. They had no secretaries or reporters. They could trust no one with their secrets. Their conclusions were conveyed by the president—Prince Cabano—to one man, who at once communicated what was needful to their greater agents, and these in turn to the lesser agents; and so the streams of authority flowed, with lightninglike speed, to the remotest parts of the so-called Republic; and many a man was struck down, ruined, crushed, destroyed, who had little suspicion that the soundless bolt which slew him came from that faraway chamber.

The Prince welcomed each newcomer pleasantly, and assigned him to his place. When all were seated he spoke:

"I have called you together, gentlemen," he said "because we have very important business to transact. The evidences multiply that we are probably on the eve of another outbreak of the restless canaille; it may be upon a larger scale than any we have yet encountered. The filthy wretches seem to grow more desperate every year; otherwise they would not rush upon certain death, as they seem disposed to do.

"I have two men in this house whom I thought it better that you should see and hear face to face. The first is General Jacob Quincy, commander of the forces which man our ten thousand air-ships, or Demons, as they are popularly called. I think it is understood by all of us that, in these men, and the deadly bombs of poisonous gas with which their vessels are equipped, we must find our chief dependence for safety and continued power. We must not forget that we are outnumbered a thousand to one, and the world grows very restive under our domination. If it were not for the Demons and the poison-bombs, I should fear the results of the coming contest—with these, victory is certain.

"Quincy, on behalf of his men, demands another increase of pay. We have already several times yielded to similar applications. We are somewhat in the condition of ancient Rome, when the praetorians murdered the emperor Pertinax, and sold the imperial crown to Didius Julianus. These men hold the control of the continent in their hands. Fortunately for us, they are not yet fully aware of their own power, and are content to merely demand an increase of pay. We cannot quarrel with them at this time, with a great insurrection pending. A refusal might drive them over to the enemy. I mention these facts so that, whatever demands General Quincy may make, however extravagant they may be, you will express no dissatisfaction. When he is gone we can talk over our plans for the future, and decide what course we will take as to these troublesome men when the outbreak is over. I shall have something to propose after he leaves us."

There was a general expression of approval around the table.

"There is another party here to-night," continued the Prince. "He is a very shrewd and cunning spy; a member of our secret police service. He goes by the name of Stephen Andrews in his intercourse with me. What his real name may be I know not.

"You are aware we have had great trouble to ascertain anything definitely about this new organization, and have succeeded but indifferently. Their plans seem to be so well taken, and their cunning so great, that all our attempts have come to naught. Many of our spies have disappeared; the police cannot learn what becomes of them; they are certainly dead, but none of their bodies are ever found. It is supposed that they have been murdered, loaded with weights and sunk in the river. This man Andrews has so far escaped. He works as a mechanic—in fact, he really is such—in one of the shops; and he is apparently the most violent and bitter of our enemies. He will hold intercourse with no one but me, for he suspects all the city police, and he comes here but seldom—not more than once in two or three months—when I pay him liberally and assign him to new work. The last task I gave him was to discover who are the leaders of the miserable creatures in this new conspiracy. He has found it very difficult to obtain any positive information upon this point. The organization is very cunningly contrived. The Brotherhood is made up in groups of ten. No one of the rank and file knows more than nine other members associated with him. The leaders of these groups of ten are selected by a higher power. These leaders are again organized in groups of ten, under a leader again selected by a higher power; but in this second group of ten no man knows his fellow's name or face; they meet always masked. And so the scale rises. The highest body of all is a group of one hundred, selected out of the whole force by an executive committee. Andrews has at length, after years of patient waiting and working, been selected as one of this upper hundred. He is to be initiated to-morrow night. He came to me for more money; for he feels he is placing himself in great danger in going into the den of the chief conspirators. I told him that I thought you would like to question him, and so he has returned again to-night, disguised in the dress of a woman, and he is now in the library awaiting your pleasure. I think we had better see him before we hear what Quincy has to say. Shall I send for him?"

General assent being given, lie stepped to the door and told Rudolph to bring up the woman he would find in the library. In a few moments the door opened and a tall personage, dressed like a woman, with a heavy veil over her face, entered. The Prince said:

"Lock the door and come forward."

The figure did so, advanced to the table and removed the bonnet and veil, disclosing the dark, bronzed face of a workman—a keen, shrewd, observant, watchful, strong face.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPY'S STORY

"Andrews," said the Prince, "tell these gentlemen what you have found out about the extent of this organization and the personality of its leaders?"

"My lord," replied the man, "I can speak only by hearsay—from whispers which I have heard in a thousand places, and by piecing together scraps of information which I have gathered in a great many ways. I do not yet speak positively. After to-morrow night I hope to be able to tell you everything."

"I understand the difficulties you have to contend with," replied the Prince; "and these gentlemen will not hold you to a strict accountability for the correctness of what you have gathered in that way."

"You can have no idea," said Andrews, "of the difficulty of obtaining information. It is a terrible organization. I do not think that anything like it has every existed before on the earth. One year ago there were fifteen of us engaged in this work; I am the only one left alive to-night."

His face grew paler as he spoke, and there was a visible start and sensation about the council board.

"This organization," he continued, "is called 'The Brotherhood of Destruction.' It extends all over Europe and America, and numbers, I am told, one hundred million members."

"Can that be possible?" asked one gentleman, in astonishment.

"I believe it to be true," said Andrews, solemnly. "Nearly every workman of good character and sober habits in New York belongs to it; and so it is in all our great cities; while the blacks of the South are members of it to a man. Their former masters have kept them in a state of savagery, instead of civilizing and elevating them; and the result is they are as barbarous and bloodthirsty as their ancestors were when brought from Africa, and fit subjects for such a terrible organization."

"What has caused such a vast movement?" asked another gentleman.

"The universal misery and wretchedness of the working classes, in the cities, on the farms—everywhere," replied Andrews.

"Are they armed?" asked another of the Council.

"It is claimed," said Andrews, "that every one of the hundred millions possesses a magazine rifle of the most improved pattern, with abundance of fixed ammunition."

"I fear, my good man," said another member of the Council, with a sneer, "that you have been frightened by some old woman's tales. Where could these men buy such weapons? What would they buy them with? Where would they hide them? Our armories and manufacturers are forbidden by law to sell firearms, unless under special permit, signed by one of our trusty officers. The value of those guns would in itself be a vast sum, far beyond the means of those miserable wretches. And our police are constantly scouring the cities and the country for weapons, and they report that the people possess none, except a few old-fashioned, worthless fowling-pieces, that have come down from father to son."

"As I said before," replied Andrews, "I tell you only what I have gleaned among the workmen in those secret whispers which pass from one man's mouth to another man's ear. I may be misinformed; but I am told that these rifles are manufactured by the men themselves (for, of course, all the skilled work of all kinds is done by workingmen) in some remote and desolate parts of Europe or America; they are furnished at a very low price, at actual cost, and paid for in small installments, during many years. They are delivered to the captains of tens and by them buried in rubber bags in the earth."

"Then that accounts," said one man, who had not yet spoken, "for a curious incident which occurred the other day near the town of Zhitomir, in the province of Volhynia, Russia, not very far from the borders of Austria. A peasant made an offer to the police to deliver up, for 200 rubles, and a promise of pardon for himself, nine of his fellow conspirators and their rifles. His terms were accepted and he was paid the money. He led the officers to a place in his barnyard, where, under a manure-heap, they dug up ten splendid rifles of American make, with fixed ammunition, of the most improved kind, the whole inclosed in a rubber bag to keep out the damp. Nine other peasants were arrested; they were all subjected to the knout; but neither they nor their captain could tell anything more than he had at first revealed. The Russian newspapers have been full of speculations as to how the rifles came there, but could arrive at no reasonable explanation."

"What became of the men?" asked Andrews, curiously.

"Nine of them were sent to Siberia for life; the tenth man, who had revealed the hiding-place of the guns, was murdered that night with his wife and all his family, and his house burned up. Even two of his brothers, who lived near him, but had taken no part in the matter, were also slain."

"I expected as much," said Andrews quietly.

This unlooked-for corroboration of the spy's story produced a marked sensation, and there was profound silence for some minutes.

At last the Prince spoke up:

"Andrews," said he, "what did you learn about the leaders of this organization?"

"There are three of them, I am told," replied the spy; they constitute what is known as 'the Executive Committee.' The commander-in-chief, it is whispered, is called, or was called—for no one can tell what his name is now—Caesar Lomellini; a man of Italian descent, but a native of South Carolina. He is, it is said, of immense size, considerable ability, and the most undaunted courage. His history is singular. He is now about forty-five years of age. In his youth, so the story goes, he migrated to the then newly settled State of Jefferson, on the upper waters of the Saskatchewan. He had married early, like all his race, and had a family. He settled down on land and went to farming. He was a quiet, peaceable, industrious man. One year, just as he was about to harvest his crops, a discharge of lightning killed his horses; they were the only ones he had. He was without the means to purchase another team, and without horses he could not gather his harvest. He was therefore forced to mortgage his land for enough to buy another pair of horses. The money-lender demanded large interest on the loan and an exorbitant bonus besides; and as the 'bankers,' as they called themselves, had an organization, he could not get the money at a lower rate anywhere in that vicinity. It was the old story. The crops failed sometimes, and when they did not fail the combinations and trusts of one sort or another swept away Caesar's profits; then he had to renew the loan, again and again, at higher rates of interest, and with still greater bonuses; then the farm came to be regarded as not sufficient security for the debt; and the horses, cattle, machinery, everything he had was covered with mortgages. Caesar worked like a slave, and his family toiled along with him. At last the crash came; he was driven out of his home; the farm and all had been lost for the price of a pair of horses. Right on the heels of this calamity, Caesar learned that his eldest daughter—a beautiful, dark-eyed girl—had been seduced by a lawyer—the agent of the money-lender—and would in a few months become a mother. Then all the devil that lay hid in the depths of the man's nature broke forth. That night the lawyer was attacked in his bed and literally hewed to pieces: the same fate overtook the money-lender. Before morning Caesar and his family had fled to the inhospitable mountain regions north of the settlement. There he gathered around him a band of men as desperate as himself, and waged bloody and incessant war on society. He seemed, however, to have a method in his crimes, for, while he spared the poor, no man who preyed upon his fellow-men was safe for an hour. At length the government massed a number of troops in the vicinity; the place got too hot for him; Caesar and his men fled to the Pacific coast; and nothing more was heard of him for three or four years. Then the terrible negro insurrection broke out in the lower Mississippi Valley, which you all remember, and a white man, of gigantic stature, appeared as their leader, a man of great daring and enterprise. When that rebellion had been suppressed, after many battles, the white man disappeared; and it is now claimed that he is in this city at the head of this terrible Brotherhood of Destruction; and that he is the same Caesar Lomellini who was once a peaceful farmer in the State of Jefferson."

The spy paused. The Prince said:

"Well, who are the others?"

"It is reported that the second in command, but really 'the brains of the organization,' as he is called by the men, is a Russian Jew. His name I could not learn; very few have seen him or know anything about him. He is said to be a cripple, and to have a crooked neck. It is reported he was driven out of his synagogue in Russia, years ago, for some crimes he had committed. He is believed to be the man who organized the Brotherhood in Europe, and he has come here to make the two great branches act together. If what is told of him be true, he must be a man of great ability, power and cunning."

"Who is the third?" asked the Prince.

"There seems to be more obscurity about him than either of the others," replied the spy. "I heard once that he was an American, a young man of great wealth and ability, and that he had furnished much of the money needed to carry on the Brotherhood. But this again is denied by others. Jenkins, who was one of our party, and who was killed some months since, told me, in our last interview, that he had penetrated far enough to find out who the third man was; and he told me this curious story, which may or may not be true. He said that several years ago there lived in this city a man of large fortune, a lawyer by education, but not engaged in the practice of his profession, by the name of Arthur Phillips. He was a benevolent man, of scholarly tastes, and something of a dreamer. He had made a study of the works of all the great socialist writers, and had become a convert to their theories, and very much interested in the cause of the working people. He established a monthly journal for the dissemination of his views. He spoke at the meetings of the workmen, and was very much beloved and respected by them. Of course, so Jenkins said, all this was very distasteful to the ruling class (I am only repeating the story as it was told to me, your lordships will please remember), and they began to persecute him. First he was ostracised from his caste. But this did not trouble him much. He had no family but his wife and one son who was away at the university. He redoubled his exertions to benefit the working classes. At this time he had a lawsuit about some property with a wealthy and influential man, a member of the government. In the course of the trial Phillips produced a writing, which purported to be signed by two men, and witnessed by two others; and Phillips swore he saw all of them sign it. Whereupon not only the men themselves, but the two witnesses to the paper, came up and swore, point-blank, that their alleged signatures were forgeries. There were four oaths against one. Phillips lost his case. But this was not the worst of it. The next day he was indicted for forgery and perjury; and, despite his wealth and the efforts of the ablest counsel he could employ, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude in the state prison. His friends said he was innocent; that he had been sacrificed by the ruling class, who feared him and desired to destroy him; that all the witnesses had been suborned by large sums of money to swear as they did; that the jury was packed, the judge one of their tools, and even his own lawyers corrupted. After several years his son—who bore the same name as himself—Arthur Phillips—returned from the university; and Jenkins told me that he had learned, in some mysterious way, that this was really the man who, out of revenge for the wrongs inflicted on his father, was now the third member of the Executive Committee of the Brotherhood, and had furnished them with large sums of money."

As this story progressed, listened to most attentively by all, I noticed that one large man, flashily dressed, flushed somewhat, and that the rest turned and looked at him. When Andrews stopped, the Prince said, quietly:

"Count, that is your man."

"Yes," replied the man spoken to, very coolly. "There is, however, no truth," he added, "in the latter part of the story; for I have had detectives shadow young Phillips ever since he returned to the city, and they report to me that he is a shallow, dissipated, drunken, worthless fellow, who spends his time about saloons and running after actresses and singers; and that it will not be long until he will have neither health nor fortune left."

I need not say that I was an intent listener to everything, and especially to the latter part of the spy's story. I pieced it out with what Maximilian had told me, and felt certain that Maximilian Petion and Arthur Phillips were one and the same person. I could now understand why it was that a gentleman so intelligent, frank and kindly by nature could have engaged in so desperate and bloody a conspiracy. Nor could I, with that awful narrative ringing in my cars, blame him much. What struck me most forcibly was that there was no attempt, on the part of the Count, to deny the sinister part of Jenkins' story; and the rest of the Council evidently had no doubt of its truth; nor did it seem to lessen him a particle in their esteem. In fact, one man said, and the rest assented to the sentiment:

"Well, it is a lucky thing the villain is locked up, anyhow."

There were some among these men whose faces were not bad. Under favorable circumstances they might have been good and just men. But they were the victims of a pernicious system, as fully as were the poor, shambling, ragged wretches of the streets and slums, who had been ground down by their acts into drunkenness and crime.

"When will the outbreak come?" asked one of the Council.

"That I cannot tell," said Andrews. "They seem to be waiting for something, or there is a hitch in their plans. The men are eager to break forth, and are only held back by the leaders. By their talk they are confident of success when the insurrection does come."

"What are their plans?" asked the Prince.

"They have none," replied Andrews, "except to burn, rob, destroy and murder. They have long lists of the condemned, I am told, including all those here present, and hundreds of thousands besides. They will kill all the men, women and children of the aristocracy, except the young girls, and these will be reserved for a worse fate—at least that is what the men about the beer-houses mutter between their cups."

The members of the government looked uneasy; some even were a trifle pale.

"Can you come here Wednesday night next and tell us what you learn during your visit to their 'Council of One Hundred'?" asked the Prince.

"Yes," replied Andrews—"if I am alive. But it is dangerous for me to come here."

"Wait in the library," said the Prince, "until I am at liberty, and I will give you an order for the thousand dollars I promised you; and also a key that will admit you to this house at any hour of the day or night. Gentlemen," he said, turning to his associates, "have you any further questions to ask this man?"

They had none, and Andrews withdrew.

"I think," said the Prince, "we had better reassemble here on Wednesday night. Matters are growing critical."

This was agreed to. The Prince stepped to the door and whispered a few words to Rudolph.

CHAPTER XV.

THE MASTER OF "THE DEMONS"

The door, in a few minutes, opened, and closed behind a tall, handsome, military-looking man, in a bright uniform, with the insignia of a brigadier-general of the United States army on his shoulders.

The Prince greeted him respectfully and invited him to a seat.

"General Quincy," said the Prince, "I need not introduce you to these gentlemen; you have met them all before. I have told them that you desired to speak to them about matters relating to your command; and they are ready to hear you."

"Gentlemen," said the General, rising to his feet, "I regret to have to approach you once more in reference to the pay of the officers and men of my command. I fear you will think them importunate, if not unreasonable. I am not here of my own volition, but as the mouthpiece of others. Neither have I incited them to make these demands for increased pay. The officers and men seem to have a high sense of their great importance in the present condition of public affairs. They openly declare that those they maintain in power are enjoying royal affluence, which they could not possess for a single day without their aid; and therefore they claim that they should be well paid."

The General paused, and the Prince said, in his smoothest tones:

"That is not an unreasonable view to take of the matter. What do they ask?"

"I have here," replied the General, drawing a paper from his pocket, "a schedule of their demands, adopted at their last meeting." He handed it to the Prince.

"You will see," he continued, "that it ranges from $5,000 per year, for the common soldiers, up through the different grades, to $25,000 per year for the commanding officer."

Not a man at the Council table winced at this extraordinary demand. The Prince said:

"The salaries asked for are high; but they will come out of the public taxes and not from our pockets; and if you can assure me that your command, in view of this increase of compensation, will work with increased zeal, faithfulness and courage on behalf of law, order and society, I, for one, should be disposed to accede to the demand you make. What say you, gentlemen?"

There was a general expression of assent around the table.

The commander of the Demons thanked them, and assured them that the officers and men would be glad to hear that their request was granted, and that the Council might depend upon their valor and devotion in any extremity of affairs.

"Have you an abundant supply of the death-bombs on hand?" asked the Prince.

"Yes, many tons of them," was the reply.

"Are they well guarded?"

"Yes, with the utmost care. A thousand men of my command watch over them constantly."

"Your air-vessels are in perfect order?"

"Yes; we drill and exercise with them every day."

"You anticipate an outbreak?"

"Yes; we look for it any hour."

"Have you any further questions to ask General Quincy?" inquired the Prince.

"None."

He was bowed out and the door locked behind him. The Prince returned to his seat.

"Gentlemen," he said, "that matter is settled, and we are safe for the present. But you can see the ticklish ground we stand on. These men will not rest satisfied with the immense concessions we have made them; they will demand more and more as the consciousness of their power increases. They know we are afraid of them. In time they will assume the absolute control of the government, and our power will be at an end. If we resist them, they will have but to drop a few of their death-bombs through the roofs of our palaces, and it is all over with us."

"What can we do?" asked two or three.

"We must have recourse to history," he replied, "and profit by the experience of others similarly situated. In the thirteenth century the sultan of Egypt, Malek-ed-Adell the Second, organized a body of soldiery made up of slaves, bought from the Mongols, who had taken them in battle. They were called the Bahri Mamelukes. They formed the Sultan's bodyguard. They were mounted on the finest horses in the world, and clad in the most magnificent dresses. They were of our own white race—Circassians. But Malek had unwittingly created, out of the slaves, a dangerous power. They, not many years afterward, deposed and murdered his son, and placed their general on the throne. For several generations they ruled Egypt. To circumscribe their power a new army of Mamelukes was formed, called the Borgis. But the cure was as bad as the disease. In 1382 the Borgi Mamelukes rose up, overthrew their predecessors, and made their leader, Barkok, supreme ruler. This dynasty held power until 1517, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt. The Turks perceived that they must either give up Egypt or destroy the Mamelukes. They massacred them in great numbers; and, at last, Mehemet Ah beguiled four hundred and seventy of their leaders into the citadel of Cairo, and closed the gates, and ordered his mercenaries to fire upon them. But one man escaped. He leaped his horse from the ramparts and escaped unhurt, although the horse was killed by the prodigious fall.

"Now, let us apply this teaching of history. I propose that after this outbreak is over we shall order the construction of ten thousand more of these air-vessels, and this will furnish us an excuse for sending a large force of apprentices to the present command to learn the management of the ships. We will select from the circle of our relatives some young, able, reliable man to command these new troops. We will then seize upon the magazine of bombs and arrest the officers and men. We will charge them with treason. The officers we will execute, and the men we will send to prison for life; for it would not be safe, with their dangerous knowledge, to liberate them. After that we will keep the magazine of bombs and the secret of the poison in the custody of men of our own caste, so that the troops commanding the air-ships will never again feel that sense of power which now possesses them."

These plans met with general approval.

"But what are we to do with the coming outbreak?" asked one of the councilors.

"I have thought of that, too," replied the Prince. "It is our interest to make it the occasion of a tremendous massacre, such as the world has never before witnessed. There are too many people on the earth, anyhow. In this way we will strike such terror into the hearts of the canaille that they will remain submissive to our will, and the domination of our children, for centuries to come."

"But how will you accomplish that?" asked one.

"Easily enough," replied the Prince. "You know that the first step such insurgents usually take is to tear up the streets of the city and erect barricades of stones and earth and everything else they can lay their hands on. Heretofore we have tried to stop them. My advice is that we let them alone—let them build their barricades as high and as strong as they please, and if they leave any outlets unobstructed, let our soldiers close them up in the same way. We have then got them in a rat-trap, surrounded by barricades, and every street and alley outside occupied by our troops. If there are a million in the trap, so much the better. Then let our flock of Demons sail up over them and begin to drop their fatal bombs. The whole streets within the barricades will soon be a sea of invisible poison. If the insurgents try to fly they will find in their own barricades the walls of their prison-house; and if they attempt to scale them they will be met, face to face, with our massed troops, who will be instructed to take no prisoners. If they break into the adjacent houses to escape, our men will follow from the back streets and gardens and bayonet them at their leisure, or fling them back into the poison. If ten millions are slain all over the world, so much the better. There will be more room for what are left, and the world will sleep in peace for centuries.

"These plans will be sent out, with your approval, to all cities, and to Europe. When the rebellion is crushed in the cities, it will not take long to subdue it among the wretched peasants of the country, and our children will rule this world for ages to come."

CHAPTER XVI.

GABRIEL'S FOLLY

While the applause that followed this diabolical scheme rang loud and long around the council-chamber, I stood there paralyzed. My eyes dilated and my heartbeat furiously. I was overwhelmed with the dreadful, the awful prospect, so coolly presented by that impassive, terrible man. My imagination was always vivid, and I saw the whole horrid reality unrolled before me like a panorama. The swarming streets filled with the oppressed people; the dark shadows of the Demons floating over them; the first bomb; the terror; the confusion; the gasping of the dying; the shrieks, the groans—another and another bomb falling here, there, everywhere; the surging masses rushing from death to death; the wild flight; the barricades a line of fire and bayonets; the awful and continuous rattle of the guns, sounding like the grinding of some dreadful machinery that crunches the bones of the living; the recoil from the bullets to the poison; the wounded stumbling over the dead, now covering the streets in strata several feet thick; and still the bombs crash and the poison spreads. Death! death! nothing but death! Ten million dead! Oh, my God!

I clasped my head—it felt as if it would burst. I must save the world from such a calamity. These men are human. They cannot be insensible to an appeal for mercy—for justice!

Carried away by these thoughts, I stooped down and unclasped the hooks; I pushed aside the box; I crawled out; the next moment I stood before them in the full glare of the electric lamps.

"For God's sake," I cried, "save the world from such an awful calamity! Have pity on mankind; even as you hope that the Mind and Heart of the Universe will have pity on you. I have heard all. Do not plunge the earth into horrors that will shock the very stars in their courses. The world can be saved! It can be saved! You have power. Be pitiful. Let me speak for you. Let me go to the leaders of this insurrection and bring you together."

"He is mad," said one.

"No, no," I replied, "I am not mad. It is you that are mad. It is the wretched people who are mad—mad with suffering and misery, as you with pride and hardness of heart. You are all men. Hear their demands. Yield a little of your superfluous blessings; and touch their hearts—with kindness, and love will spring up like flowers in the track of the harrow. For the sake of Christ Jesus, who died on the cross for all men, I appeal to you. Be just, be generous, be merciful. Are they not your brethren? Have they not souls like yourselves? Speak, speak, and I will toil as long as I can breathe. I will wear the flesh from off my bones, if I can reconcile the castes of this wretched society, and save civilization."

The Prince had recoiled with terror at my first entrance. He had now rallied his faculties.

"How did you come here?" he asked.

Fortunately the repulsive coldness with which the Council had met my earnest appeals, which I had fairly shrieked at them, had restored to some extent the balance of my reason. The thought flashed over me that I must not betray Rudolph.

"Through yonder open window," I replied.

"How did you reach it?" asked the Prince.

"I climbed up the ivy vine to it."

"What did you come here for?" he asked.

"To appeal to you, in the name of God, to prevent the coming of this dreadful outbreak."

"The man is a religious fanatic," said one of the Council to another; "probably one of the street preachers."

The Prince drew two or three of the leaders together, and they whispered for a few minutes. Then he went to the door and spoke to Rudolph. I caught a few words: "Not leave—alive—send for Macarius—midnight—garden."

Rudolph advanced and took me by the arm. The revulsion had come. I was dazed—overwhelmed. There swept over me, like the rush of a flood, the dreadful thought: "What will become of Estella?" I went with him like a child. I was armed, but an infant might have slain me.

When we were in the hall, Rudolph said to me, in a hoarse whisper:

"I heard everything. You meant nobly; but you were foolish—wild. You might have ruined us all. But there is a chance of escape yet. It will be an hour before the assassin will arrive. I can secure that much delay. In the meantime, be prudent and silent, and follow my directions implicitly."

I promised, very humbly, to do so.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT

He opened the door of a room and pushed me into it. "Wait," he whispered, "for my orders." I looked around me. It was Rudolph's room—the one I had been in before. I was not alone. There was a young gentleman standing at a window, looking out into the garden. He turned around and advanced toward me, with his hand extended and a smile on his face. It was Estella! looking more charming than ever in her masculine dress. I took her hand. Then my heart smote me; and I fell upon my knees before her.

"O Estella," I cried, "pardon me. I would have sacrificed you for mankind—you that are dearer to me than the whole human race. Like a fool I broke from my hiding-place, and appealed to those hearts of stone—those wild beasts—those incarnate fiends—to spare the world the most dreadful calamity it has ever known. They proposed to murder ten million human beings! I forgot my task—my duty—you—my own safety—everything, to save the world."

Her eyes dilated as I spoke, and then, without a trace of mock modesty, without a blush, she laid her hand upon my head and said simply:

"If you had done less, I should have loved you less. What am I in the presence of such a catastrophe? But if you are to die we can at least perish together. In that we have the mastery of our enemies. Our liberty is beyond their power."

"But you shall not die," I said, wildly, springing to my feet. "The assassin comes! Give me the poisoned knife. When he opens the door I shall slay him. I shall bear you with me. Who will dare to arrest our departure with that dreadful weapon—that instantaneous death—shining in my hand. Besides, I carry a hundred lives at my girdle. Once in the streets, we can escape."

She took from the pocket of her coat the sheathed dagger and handed it to me.

"We must, however, be guided by the counsels of Rudolph," she quietly said; "he is a faithful friend."

"True," I replied.

We sat near each other. I presumed nothing upon the great admission she had so gravely made. This was a woman to be worshiped rather than wooed. I told her all the story of my life. I described my home in that strange, wild, ancient, lofty land; my mother, my brothers; the wide, old, roomy house; the trees, the flowers, the clustering, bleating sheep.

A half hour passed. The door opened. A burst of laughter and the clinking of glasses resounded through it. Rudolph entered.

"The Prince and his friends," he said, "make merry over their assured victory. If you will tell Maximilian all you have heard to-night, the result may be different from what they anticipate. Come with me."

He led the way through a suite of two or three rooms which communicated with his apartment.

"We must throw the hounds off the scent of the fox," he said; and, to our astonishment, he proceeded to tear down the heavy curtains from two windows, having first locked the door and closed the outer shutters. He then tore the curtains into long strips, knotting them together; we pulled upon them to test their strength. He then opened one of the windows and dropped the end of the long rope thus formed out of it, fastening the other to a heavy piece of furniture, within the room.

"That will account for your escape," he said. "I have already thrown the rope ladder from the window of the room Estella occupied. These precautions are necessary for my own safety."

Then, locking the communicating doors, we returned to his room.

"Put this cloak over your shoulders," he said; "it will help disguise you. Walk boldly down these stairs," opening another door—not the one we had entered by; "turn to the right—to the right, remember—and on your left hand you will soon find a door—the first you will come to. Open it. Say to the man on guard: 'Show me to the carriage of Lord Southworth.' There is no such person; but that is the signal agreed upon. He will lead you to the carriage. Maximilian is the footman. Farewell, and may God bless you."

We shook hands. I followed his directions; we met no one; I opened the door; the guard, as soon as I uttered the password, led me, through a mass of carriages, to where one stood back under some overhanging trees. The footman hurried to open the door. I gave my hand to Estella; she sprang in; I followed her. But this little movement of instinctive courtesy on my part toward a woman had been noticed by one of the many spies hanging around. He thought it strange that one man should offer his hand to assist another into a carriage. He whispered his suspicions to a comrade. We had hardly gone two blocks from the palace when Maximilian leaned down and said: "I fear we are followed."

Our carriage turned into another street, and then into another. I looked out and could see—for the streets were very bright with the magnetic light—that, some distance behind us, came two carriages close together, while at a greater distance, behind them, I caught sight of a third vehicle. Maximilian leaned down again and said:

"We are certainly pursued by two carriages. The third one I recognize as our own—the man with the bombs. We will drive to the first of the houses we have secured. Be ready to spring out the moment we stop, and follow me quickly into the house, for all depends on the rapidity of our movements."

In a little while the carriage suddenly stopped. I took Estella's hand. She needed no help. Maximilian was ascending the steps of a house, key in hand. We followed. I looked back. One of our pursuers was a block away; the other a little behind him. The carriage with the bombs I could not see—it might be obscured by the trees, or it might have lost us in the fierce speed with which we had traveled.

"Quick," said Maximilian, pulling us in and locking the door.

We followed him, running through a long, lighted hall, out into a garden; a gate flew open; we rushed across the street and sprang into another carriage; Maximilian leaped to his place; crack went the whip, and away we flew; but on the instant the quick eyes of my friend saw, rapidly whirling around the next corner, one of the carriages that had been pursuing us.

"They suspected our trick," said he. "Where, in heaven's name, is the man with the bombs?" he added, anxiously.

Our horses were swift, but still that shadow clung to us; the streets were still and deserted, for it was after midnight; but they were as bright as if the full moon shone in an unclouded sky.

"Ah! there he comes, at last," said Maximilian, with a sigh of relief. "I feared we might meet another carriage of the police, and this fellow behind us would call it to his help, and our case would be desperate, as they would know our trick. We should have to fight for it. Now observe what takes place."

Estella, kneeling on the cushions, looked out through the glass window in the back of the carriage; I leaned far out at the side.

"See, Estella," I cried, "how that hindmost team flies! They move like race-horses on the course."

Nearer and nearer they come to our pursuers; they are close behind them; the driver of the front carriage seems to know that there is danger; he lashes his horses furiously; it is in vain. Now they are side by side—side by side for a time; but now our friends forge slowly ahead. The driver of the beaten team suddenly pulls his horses back on their haunches. It is too late. A man stands up on the seat of the front carriage-it is an open barouche. I could see his arm describe an arc through the air; the next instant the whole street was ablaze with a flash of brilliant red light, and the report of a tremendous explosion rang in my ears. Through the smoke and dust I could dimly see the horses of our pursuers piled in a heap upon the street, kicking, plunging, dying.

"It is all right now," said Maximilian quietly; and then he spoke to the driver: "Turn the next corner to the left."

After having made several changes of direction—with intent to throw any other possible pursuers off the track—and it being evident that we were not followed, except by the carriage of our friends, we drove slowly to Maximilian's house and alighted.

The sweet-faced old lady took the handsome, seeming boy, Estella, in her arms, and with hearty cordiality welcomed her to her new home. We left them together, mingling tears of joy.

Max and I adjourned to the library, and there, at his request, I told him all that had happened in the council-chamber. He smoked his cigar and listened attentively. His face darkened as I repeated the spy's story, but he neither admitted nor denied the truth of the part which I thought related to himself. When I told him about the commander of the air-ships, his interest was so great that his cigar went out; and when I narrated the conversation which occurred after General Quincy had left the room his face lighted up with a glow of joy. He listened intently to the account of the Prince's plan of battle, and smiled grimly. But when I told how I came from my hiding-place and appealed to the oligarchy to spare mankind, he rose from his chair and walked the room, profoundly agitated; and when I had finished, by narrating how Rudolph led me to his room, to the presence of Estella, he threw his arms around my neck, and said, "You dear old fool! It was just like you;" but I could see that his eyes were wet with emotion.

Then he sat for some time in deep thought. At last he said:

"Gabriel, would you be willing to do something more to serve me?"

"Certainly," I replied; "anything."

"Would you go with me to-morrow night and tell this tale to the council of our Brotherhood? My own life and the lives of my friends, and the liberty of one dear to me, may depend upon your doing so."

"I shall go with you most willingly," I said. "To tell you the truth," I added, "While I cannot approve of your terrible Brotherhood, nevertheless what I have seen and heard tonight satisfies me that the Plutocrats should no longer cumber the earth with their presence. Men who can coolly plot, amid laughter, the death of ten million human beings, for the purpose of preserving their ill-gotten wealth and their ill-used power, should be exterminated from the face of the planet as enemies of mankind—as poisonous snakes—vermin."

He grasped my hand and thanked me.

It was pleasant to think, that night, that Estella loved me; that I had saved her; that we were under the same roof; and I wove visions in my brain brighter than the dreams of fairyland; and Estella moved everywhere amid them, a radiant angel.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE EXECUTION

"Now, Gabriel," said Max, "I will have to blindfold you—not that I mistrust you, but that I have to satisfy the laws of our society and the scruples of others."

This was said just before we opened the door. He folded a silk handkerchief over my face, and led me down the steps and seated me in a carriage. He gave some whispered directions to the driver, and away we rolled. It was a long drive. At last I observed that peculiar salty and limy smell in the air, which told me we were approaching the river. The place was very still and solitary. There were no sounds of vehicles or foot-passengers. The carriage slowed up, and we stopped.

"This way," said Max, opening the door of the carriage, and leading me by the hand. We walked a few steps; we paused; there were low whisperings. Then we descended a long flight of steps; the air had a heavy and subterranean smell; we hurried forward through a large chamber. I imagined it to be the cellar of some abandoned warehouse; the light came faintly through the bandage over my face, and I inferred that a guide was carrying a lantern before us. Again we stopped. There was more whispering and the rattle of paper, as if the guards were examining some document. The whispering was renewed; then we entered and descended again a flight of steps, and again went forward for a short distance. The air was very damp and the smell earthy. Again I heard the whispering and the rattling of paper. There was delay. Some one within was sent for and came out. Then the door was flung open, and we entered a room in which the air appeared to be drier than in those we had passed through, and it seemed to be lighted up. There were little movements and stirrings of the atmosphere which indicated that there were a number of persons in the room. I stood still.

Then a stern, loud voice said:

"Gabriel Weltstein, hold up your right hand."

I did so. The voice continued:

"You do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that the statements you are about to make are just and true; that you are incited to make them neither by corruption, nor hate, nor any other unworthy motive; and that you will tell the truth and all the truth; and to this you call all the terrors of the unknown world to witness; and you willingly accept death if you utter anything that is false."

I bowed my head.

"What brother vouches for this stranger?" asked the same stern voice.

Then I heard Maximilian. He spoke as if he was standing near my side. He said:

"I do. If I had not been willing to vouch for him with my life, I should not have asked to bring him—not a member of our Brotherhood—into this presence. He saved my life; he is a noble, just and honorable man—one who loves his kind, and would bless and help them if he could. He has a story to tell which concerns us all."

"Enough," said the voice. "Were you present in the council-chamber of the Prince of Cabano last night? If so, tell us what you saw and heard?"

Just then there was a slight noise, as if some one was moving quietly toward the door behind me, by which I had just entered. Then came another voice, which I had not before heard—a thin, shrill, strident, imperious voice—a voice that it seemed to me I should recognize again among a million. It cried out:

"Back to your seat! Richard, tell the guards to permit no one to leave this chamber until the end of our meeting."

There was a shuffling of feet, and whispering, and then again profound silence.

"Proceed," said the stern voice that had first spoken.

Concealing all reference to Estella, and omitting to name Rudolph, whom I referred to simply as one of their Brotherhood known to Maximilian, I told, in the midst of a grave-like silence, how I had been hidden in the room next to the council-chamber; and then I went on to give a concise history of what I had witnessed and heard.

"Uncover his eyes!" exclaimed the stern voice.

Maximilian untied the handkerchief. For a moment or two I was blinded by the sudden glare of light. Then, as my eyes recovered their function, I could see that I stood, as I had supposed, in the middle of a large vault or cellar. Around the room, on rude benches, sat perhaps one hundred men. At the end, on a sort of dais, or raised platform, was a man of gigantic stature, masked and shrouded. Below him, upon a smaller elevation, sat another, whose head, I noticed even then, was crooked to one side. Still below him, on a level with the floor, at a table, were two men who seemed to be secretaries. Every man present wore a black mask and a long cloak of dark material. Near me stood one similarly shrouded, who, I thought, from the size and figure, must be Maximilian.

It was a solemn, silent, gloomy assemblage, and the sight of it thrilled through my very flesh and bones. I was not frightened, but appalled, as I saw all those eyes, out of those expressionless dark faces, fixed upon me. I felt as if they were phantoms, or dead men, in whom only the eyes lived.

The large man stood up. He was indeed a giant. He seemed to uncoil himself from his throne as he rose.

"Unmask," he said.

There was a rustle, and the next moment the masks were gone and the cloaks had fallen down.

It was an extraordinary assemblage that greeted my eyes; a long array of stern faces, dark and toil-hardened, with great, broad brows and solemn or sinister eyes.

Last night I had beheld the council of the Plutocracy. Here was the council of the Proletariat. The large heads at one end of the line were matched by the large heads at the other. A great injustice, or series of wrongs, working through many generations, had wrought out results that in some sense duplicated each other. Brutality above had produced brutality below; cunning there was answered by cunning here; cruelty in the aristocrat was mirrored by cruelty in the workman. High and low were alike victims—unconscious victims—of a system. The crime was not theirs; it lay at the door of the shallow, indifferent, silly generations of the past.

My eyes sought the officers. I noticed that Maximilian was disguised—out of an excess of caution, as I supposed—with eye-glasses and a large dark mustache. His face, I knew, was really beardless.

I turned to the president. Such a man I had never seen before. He was, I should think, not less than six feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. His great arms hung down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His skin was quite dark, almost negroid; and a thick, close mat of curly black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was muscular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fascinated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and glaring; they seemed to shine like those of the cat-tribe, with a luminosity of their own. This, then—I said to myself—must be Caesar, the commander of the dreaded Brotherhood.

A movement attracted me to the man who sat below him; he had spoken to the president.

He was in singular contrast with his superior. He was old and withered. One hand seemed to be shrunken, and his head was permanently crooked to one side. The face was mean and sinister; two fangs alone remained in his mouth; his nose was hooked; the eyes were small, sharp, penetrating and restless; but the expanse of brow above them was grand and noble. It was one of those heads that look as if they had been packed full, and not an inch of space wasted. His person was unclean, however, and the hands and the long finger-nails were black with dirt. I should have picked him out anywhere as a very able and a very dangerous man. He was evidently the vice-president of whom the spy had spoken—the nameless Russian Jew who was accounted "the brains of the Brotherhood."

"Gabriel Weltstein," said the giant, in the same stern, loud voice, "each person in this room will now pass before you,—the officers last; and,—under the solemn oath you have taken,—I call upon you to say whether the spy you saw last night in the council-chamber of the Prince of Cabano is among them. But first, let me ask, did you see him clearly, and do you think you will be able to identify him?"

"Yes," I replied; "he faced me for nearly thirty minutes, and I should certainly know him if I saw him again."

"Brothers," said the president, "you will now———"

But here there was a rush behind me. I turned toward the door. Two men were scuffling with a third, who seemed to be trying to break out. There were the sounds of a struggle; then muttered curses; then the quick, sharp report of a pistol. There was an exclamation of pain and more oaths; knives flashed in the air; others rushed pell-mell into the melee; and then the force of numbers seemed to triumph, and the crowd came, dragging a man forward to where I stood. His face was pale as death; the blood, streamed from a flesh wound on his forehead; an expression of dreadful terror glared out of his eyes; he gasped and looked from right to left. The giant had descended from his dais. He strode forward. The wretch was laid at my feet.

"Speak," said Caesar, "is that the man?"

"It is," I replied.

The giant took another step, and he towered over the prostrate wretch.

"Brothers," he asked, "what is your judgment upon the spy?"

"Death!" rang the cry from a hundred throats.

The giant put his hand in his bosom; there was a light in his terrible face as if he had long waited for such an hour.

"Lift him up," he said.

Two strong men held the spy by his arms; they lifted him to his feet; he writhed and struggled and shrieked, but the hands that held him were of iron.

"Stop!" said the thin, strident voice I had heard before, and the cripple advanced into the circle. He addressed the prisoner:

"Were you followed to this place?"

"Yes, yes," eagerly cried the spy. "Spare me, spare me, and I will tell you everything. Three members of the police force were appointed to follow, in a carriage, the vehicle that brought me here. They were to wait about until the meeting broke up and then shadow the tallest man and a crook-necked man to their lodgings and identify them. They are now waiting in the dark shadows of the warehouse."

"Did you have any signal agreed upon with them?" asked the cripple.

"Yes," the wretch replied, conscious that he was giving up his associates to certain death, but willing to sacrifice the whole world if he might save his own life. "Spare me, spare me, and I win tell you all."

"Proceed," said the cripple.

"I would not trust myself to be known by them. I agreed with Prince Cabano upon a signal between us. I am to come to them, if I need their help, and say: 'Good evening, what time is it?' The reply is, 'It is thieves' time.' Then I am to say, 'The more the better;' and they are to follow me."

"Richard," said the cripple, "did you hear that?"

"Yes."

"Take six men with you; leave them in the brew-house cellar; lead the police thither; throw the bodies in the river."

The man called Richard withdrew, with his men, to his work of murder.

The prisoner rolled his eyes appealingly around that dreadful circle.

"Spare me!" he cried. "I know the secrets of the banks. I can lead you into the Prince of Cabano's house. Do not kill me.

"Is that all?" asked the giant.

"Yes," replied the cripple.

In an instant the huge man, like some beast that had been long held back from its prey, gave a leap forward, his face revealing terrible ferocity; it was a tiger that glares, plunges and devours. I saw something shining, brilliant and instantaneous as an electric flash; then there was the sound of a heavy blow. The spy sprang clean out of the hands that were holding him, high up in the air; and fell, close to me, stone dead. He had been dead, indeed, when he made that fearful leap. His heart was split in twain. His spring was not the act of the man; it was the protest of the body against the rush of the departing spirit; it was the clay striving to hold on to the soul.

The giant stooped and wiped his bloody knife upon the clothes of the dead man. The cripple laughed a crackling, hideous laugh. I hope God will never permit me to hear such a laugh again. Others took it up—it echoed all around the room. I could think of nothing but the cachinnations of the fiends as the black gates burst open and new hordes of souls are flung, startled and shrieking, into hell.

"Thus die all the enemies of the Brotherhood!" cried the thin voice of the cripple.

And long and loud they shouted.

"Remove the body through the back door," said the giant, "and throw it into the river."

"Search his clothes first," said the cripple.

They did so, and found the money which the Prince had ordered to be given him—it was the price of his life—and also a bundle of papers. The former was handed over to the treasurer of the Brotherhood; the latter were taken possession of by the vice-president.

Then, resuming his seat, the giant said:

"Gabriel Weltstein, the Brotherhood thank you for the great service you have rendered them. We regret that your scruples will not permit you to become one of us; but we regard you as a friend and we honor you as a man; and if at any time the Brotherhood can serve you, be assured its full powers shall be put forth in your behalf."

I was too much shocked by the awful scene I had just witnessed to do more than bow my head.

"There is one thing more," he continued, "we shall ask of you; and that is that you will repeat your story once again to another man, who will soon be brought here. We knew from Maximilian what you were about to tell, and we made our arrangements accordingly. Do not start," he said, "or look alarmed—there will be no more executions."

Turning to the men, he said: "Resume your masks." He covered his own face, and all the rest did likewise.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MAMELUKES OF THE AIR

The vice-president of the Brotherhood leaned forward and whispered to one of the secretaries, who, taking two men with him, left the room. A seat was given me. There was a pause of perhaps ten minutes. Not a whisper broke the silence. Then there came a rap at the door. The other secretary went to it. There was whispering and consultation; then the door opened and the secretary and his two companions entered, leading a large man, blindfolded. He wore a military uniform. They stopped in the middle of the room.

"General Jacob Quincy," said the stern voice of the president, "before we remove the bandage from your eyes I ask you to repeat, in this presence, the pledge you made to the representative of the Brotherhood, who called upon you today."

The man said:

"I was informed by your messenger that you had a communication to make to me which involved the welfare, and perhaps the lives, of the officers and men commanding and manning the air-vessels, or war-ships, called by the people 'The Demons.' You invited me here under a pledge of safe conduct; you left your messenger with my men, as hostage for my return; and I promised never to reveal to mortal ear anything that I might see or hear, except so far as it might be necessary, with your consent, to do so to warn my command of those dangers which you assure me threaten them. This promise I here renew, and swear by the Almighty God to keep it forever inviolate."

"Remove his bandage," said the president.

They did so, and there stood before me the handsome and intelligent officer whom I had seen last night in the Prince of Cabano's council-chamber.

The president nodded to the cripple, as if by some pre-arrangement, and said, "Proceed."

"General Jacob Quincy," said the thin, penetrating voice of the vice-president of the Order, "you visited a certain house last night, on a matter of business, connected with your command. How many men knew of your visit?"

"Three," said the general, with a surprised look. "I am to communicate the results to a meeting of my command tomorrow night; but I thought it better to keep the matter pretty much to myself until that time."

"May I ask who were the men to whom you spoke of the matter?"

"I might object to your question," he said, "but that I suppose something important lies behind it. The men were my brother, Col. Quincy; my adjutant-general, Captain Underwood, and my friend Major Hartwright."

"Do you think any of these men would tell your story to any one else?"

"Certainly not. I would venture my life upon their prudence and secrecy, inasmuch as I asked them to keep the matter to themselves. But why do you ask such questions?"

"Because," said the wily cripple, "I have a witness here who is about to reveal to you everything you said and did in that council-chamber last night, even to the minutest detail. If you had told your story to many, or to untrustworthy persons, there might be a possibility that this witness had gleaned the facts from others; and that he had not been present, as he claims; and therefore that you could not depend upon what he says as to other matters of importance. Do you recognize the justice of my reasoning?"

"Certainly," said the general. "If you produce here a man who can tell me just where I was last night, what I said, and what was said to me, I shall believe that he was certainly present; for I well know he did not get it from me or my friends; and I know, equally well, that none of those with whom I had communication would tell what took place to you or any friend of yours."

"Be kind enough to stand up," said the cripple to me. I did so.

"Did you ever see that man before?" he asked the general.

The general looked at me intently.

"Never," he replied.

"Have you ever seen this man before?" he asked me.

"Yes," I replied.

"When and where?"

"Last night; at the palace of Prince Cabano—in his council-chamber."

"Proceed, and tell the whole story."

I did so. The general listened closely, never relaxing his scrutiny of my face. When I had finished my account of the interview, the cripple asked the general whether it was a faithful narration of what had taken place. He said it was—wonderfully accurate in every particular.