ffled off. He was muffled up, but Andrew wondered if he had not
seen him at the meeting.

The young Scotchman had an uneasy feeling that his footsteps were
dodged.

As soon as he reached home he unfolded the scrap of paper that had been
pushed into his hand. It merely contained these words--

"Cover up your neck."

CHAPTER V

On the following Tuesday Andrew met the president by appointment at the
Marble Arch.

Until he had received his final instructions he was pledged not to
begin, and he had passed these two intervening days staring at his
empty fireplace.

They shook hands silently and passed into the Park. The president was
always thoughtful in a crowd.

"In such a gathering as this," said Andrew, pointing an imaginary
pistol at a lecturer on Socialism, "you could hardly go wrong to let
fly."

"You must not speak like that," the president said gently, "or we shall
soon lose you. Your remark, however, opens the way for what I have to
say. You have never expressed any curiosity as to your possible fate.
I hope this is not because you under-estimate the risks. If the
authorities saw you 'letting fly' as you term it, promiscuously, or
even at a given object, they would treat you as no better than a
malefactor."

"I thought that all out yesterday," said Andrew, "and I am amazed at
the society's success in escaping detection."

"I feared this," said the president. "You are mistaken. We don't
always escape detection. Sometimes we are caught--"

"Caught?"

"Yes, and hanged."

"But if that is so, why does it not get into the papers?"

"The papers are full of it."

Andrew looked incredulous.

"In the present state of the law," said the president, "motive in a
murder goes for nothing. However iniquitous this may be--and I do not
attempt to defend it--we accept it as a fact. Your motives may have
been unexceptionable, but they hang you all the same. Thus our members
when apprehended preserve silence on this point, or say that they are
Fenians. This is to save the society. The man who got fifteen years
the other day for being found near St. Stephen's with six infernal
machines in his pockets was really one of us. He was taking them to be
repaired."

"And the other who got ten years the week before?"

"He was from America, but it was for one of our affairs that he was
sentenced. He was quite innocent. You see the dynamiters, vulgarly so
called, are playing into our hands. Suspic