w little trace of it; but that evening, had his mate Scanlan not
been at hand to lead him home, the feted hero would surely have spent
his night under the bar.

On a Saturday night McMurdo was introduced to the lodge. He had thought
to pass in without ceremony as being an initiate of Chicago; but there
were particular rites in Vermissa of which they were proud, and these
had to be undergone by every postulant. The assembly met in a large
room reserved for such purposes at the Union House. Some sixty members
assembled at Vermissa; but that by no means represented the full
strength of the organization, for there were several other lodges in
the valley, and others across the mountains on each side, who exchanged
members when any serious business was afoot, so that a crime might be
done by men who were strangers to the locality. Altogether there were
not less than five hundred scattered over the coal district.

In the bare assembly room the men were gathered round a long table. At
the side was a second one laden with bottles and glasses, on which some
members of the company were already turning their eyes. McGinty sat at
the head with a flat black velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black
hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to
be a priest presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left of
him were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted
Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion as
emblem of his office.

They were, for the most part, men of mature age; but the rest of the
company consisted of young fellows from eighteen to twenty-five, the
ready and capable agents who carried out the commands of their seniors.
Among the older men were many whose features showed the tigerish,
lawless souls within; but looking at the rank and file it was difficult
to believe that these eager and open-faced young fellows were in very
truth a dangerous gang of murderers, whose minds had suffered such
complete moral perversion that they took a horrible pride in their
proficiency at the business, and looked with deepest respect at the man
who had the reputation of making what they called "a clean job."

To their contorted natures it had become a spirited and chivalrous
thing to volunteer for service against some man who had never injured
them, and whom in many cases they had never seen in their lives. The
crime committed, they quarrelled as to who had actually st