s the bar to the Boss that the job had been well carried through.
Others, and among them McMurdo, broke away into side streets, and so by
devious paths to their own homes.

Chapter 4

The Valley of Fear

When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to remember his
initiation into the lodge. His head ached with the effect of the drink,
and his arm, where he had been branded, was hot and swollen. Having his
own peculiar source of income, he was irregular in his attendance at
his work; so he had a late breakfast, and remained at home for the
morning writing a long letter to a friend. Afterwards he read the Daily
Herald. In a special column put in at the last moment he read:

OUTRAGE AT THE HERALD OFFICE--EDITOR
SERIOUSLY INJURED.

It was a short account of the facts with which he was himself more
familiar than the writer could have been. It ended with the statement:

The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can
hardly be hoped that their exertions will be attended by any
better results than in the past. Some of the men were
recognized, and there is hope that a conviction may be
obtained. The source of the outrage was, it need hardly be
said, that infamous society which has held this community
in bondage for so long a period, and against which the
Herald has taken so uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger's
many friends will rejoice to hear that, though he has been
cruelly and brutally beaten, and though he has sustained
severe injuries about the head, there is no immediate danger
to his life.

Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester rifles,
had been requisitioned for the defense of the office.

McMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipe with a hand
which was shaky from the excesses of the previous evening, when there
was a knock outside, and his landlady brought to him a note which had
just been handed in by a lad. It was unsigned, and ran thus:

I should wish to speak to you, but would rather not do so
in your house. You will find me beside the flagstaff upon
Miller Hill. If you will come there now, I have something
which it is important for you to hear and for me to say.

McMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; for he could not
imagine what it meant or who was the author of it. Had it been in a
feminine hand, he might have imagined that it was the