l had been glancing timidly and nervously at the figures grouped
round the table, and her breast was heaving. She rose; perhaps it was to
enable herself to speak more freely; perhaps it was only out of
deference to those seated there.

"No," she said, in a low voice, but it was heard clearly enough in the
silence. "I--I would say a word to you--whom I may not see again. Yes, I
thank you--from my heart; you have taken a great trouble away from my
life. I--I thank you; but there is something I would say."

She paused for a second. She was very pale. She seemed to be nerving
herself for some effort; and, strangely enough, her mother's hand,
unseen, was stretched up to her, and she clasped it and held it tight.
It gave her courage.

"It is true, I am only a girl; you are my elders, and you are men; but I
have known good and brave men who were not ashamed to listen to what a
woman thought was right; and it is as a woman that I speak to you," she
said; and her voice, low and timid as it was, had a strange, pathetic
vibration in it, that went to the heart. "I have suffered much of late.
I hope no other woman will ever suffer in the same way."

Again she hesitated, but for the last time.

"Oh, gentlemen, you who are so powerful, you who profess to seek only
mercy and justice and peace, why should you, also, follow the old, bad,
cruel ways, and stain yourselves with blood? Surely it is not for you,
the friends of the poor, the champions of the weak, the teachers of the
people, to rely on the weapon of the assassin! When you go to the world,
and seek for help and labor, surely you should go with clean hands--so
that the wives and the sisters and the daughters of those who may join
you may not have their lives made terrible to them. It is not a reign
of terror you would establish on the earth! For the sake of those who
have already joined you--for the sake of the far greater numbers who may
yet be your associates--I implore you to abandon these secret and
dreadful means. Surely, gentlemen, the blessing of Heaven is more likely
to follow you and crown your work if you can say to every man whom you
ask to join you, 'You have women-folk around you. They have tender
consciences, perhaps; but we will ask of you nothing that your sister or
your wife or your daughter would not approve.' Then good men will not be
afraid of you; then brave men will not have to stifle their conscience
in serving you; and whether you succeed or do not su