is therefore well that he should do
something useful before he meets his fate."

"How curious that it should just happen so!" said the Princess
calmly, as she rose from the table and moved towards the door
followed by Natasha.

As soon as the ladies had left the room, Colston and Arnold lit their
cigarettes and chatted while they smoked over their last glass of
claret. Arnold would have liked to have asked more about the coming
tragedy, but something in Colston's manner restrained him; and so the
conversation remained on the subject of the Russian journey until
they returned to the sitting-room.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS.

On the 6th of March 1904, just six months after Arnold's journey to
Russia, a special meeting of the Inner Circle of the Terrorists took
place in the Council-chamber, at the house on Clapham Common.

Although it was only attended by twelve persons all told, and those
men and women whose names were unknown outside the circle of their
own Society and the records of the Russian police, it was the most
momentous conference that had taken place in the history of the world
since the council of war that Abdurrhaman the Moslem had held with
his chieftains eleven hundred and seventy-two years before, and, by
taking their advice, spared the remnants of Christendom from the
sword of Islam.

Then the fate of the world hung in the balance of a council of war,
and the supremacy of the Cross or the Crescent depended, humanly
speaking, upon the decision of a dozen warriors. Now the fate of the
civilisation that was made possible by that decision, lay at the
mercy of a handful of outlaws and exiles who had laboriously brought
to perfection the secret schemes of a single man.

The work of the Terrorists was finally complete. Under the whole
fabric of Society lay the mines which a single spark would now
explode, and above this slumbering volcano the earth was trembling
with the tread of millions of armed men, divided into huge hostile
camps, and only waiting until Diplomacy had finished its work in the
dark, and gave the long-awaited signal of inevitable and universal
war.

To-night that spark was to be shaken from the torch of Revolution,
and to-morrow the first of the mines would explode. After that, if
the course to be determined on by the Terrorist Council failed to
arrive at the results which it was designed to reach, the armies of
Europe would fight their way through the greatest