ing
sunlight helped firelight to illumine the little company, sat three
men--two of them armed with heavy automatics--and a woman. Another
woman, Catherine, was standing by her chair and beckoning Gabriel to
his.

"Come, Comrade!" she exclaimed. "If you delay much longer, everything
will be stone cold, and _then_ beg forgiveness if you dare!"

Gabriel laughed.

"Your own fault, if you wait for me," he answered, seating himself. "You
know how it is when you get to scribbling--you never know when to stop.
And the scenery, up here, won't let you go. Positively fascinating,
that view is! If the Plutes knew of it, they'd put a summer resort
here, and coin millions!"

"Yes," answered Craig, once Congressman Craig, but now hiding from the
Air Trust spies. "And what's more, they'd mighty soon confiscate this
resting-up place of the Comrades, and have us back behind bars, or
worse. But they _don't_ know about it, and aren't likely to. Thank
Heaven for at least one place the Party can maintain as an asylum for
our people when too hard-pressed! Not a road within ten miles of here.
No way to reach this place, masked here in the cliffs and mountains,
except by aeroplane. Not one chance in a thousand, fellows, that they'll
ever find it. Confusion take them all!"

The meal progressed, with plenty of serious and earnest discussion of
the pressing problems now close at hand. Brevard, a short, spare man,
editor of the recently-suppressed "San Francisco Revolutionist" and now
in hiding, made a few trenchant remarks, from time to time. Grantham and
his wife, both active speakers on the "Underground Circuit" and both
under sentence of long imprisonment, said little. Most of the
conversation was between Catherine, Craig and Gabriel. Long before the
supper was done, lamps had to be brought and curtains lowered. At last
the meal was over.

"Dessert, now, Gabriel!" exclaimed Grantham. "Your turn!"

"Eh? What?" asked Armstrong. "My turn for what?"

"Your turn to do your part! Don't think that you're going to write a
poem and then put it in your pocket, that way. Come, out with it!"

Gabriel's protests availed nothing. The others overbore him. And at
last, unwillingly, he drew out the manuscript and spread it open on his
knee.

"You really want to hear this?" he demanded. "If you can possibly spare
me, I wish you would!"

For all answer, Craig pushed a lamp over toward him. The warm light on
Gabriel's face, now slightly bearded, an