came John Carlson, who
demanded Wickson's shoes.

The young man did not want to give up his shoes, and even offered to
fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer's strength in Ernest's
hands. Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous
loss of skin due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded in
doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended
the young man's obliterated trial, Carlson put on the shoes and walked
away to the left. He walked for miles, around knolls, over ridges and
through canyons, and finally covered the trail in the running water of
a creek-bed. Here he removed the shoes, and, still hiding trail for a
distance, at last put on his own shoes. A week later Wickson got back
his shoes.

That night the hounds were out, and there was little sleep in the
refuge. Next day, time and again, the baying hounds came down the
canyon, plunged off to the left on the trail Carlson had made for them,
and were lost to ear in the farther canyons high up the mountain. And
all the time our men waited in the refuge, weapons in hand--automatic
revolvers and rifles, to say nothing of half a dozen infernal machines
of Biedenbach's manufacture. A more surprised party of rescuers could
not be imagined, had they ventured down into our hiding-place.

I have now given the true disappearance of Philip Wickson, one-time
oligarch, and, later, comrade in the Revolution. For we converted him
in the end. His mind was fresh and plastic, and by nature he was very
ethical. Several months later we rode him, on one of his father's
horses, over Sonoma Mountains to Petaluma Creek and embarked him in
a small fishing-launch. By easy stages we smuggled him along our
underground railway to the Carmel refuge.

There he remained eight months, at the end of which time, for two
reasons, he was loath to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in
love with Anna Roylston, and the other was that he had become one of
us. It was not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his
love affair that he acceded to our wishes and went back to his father.
Ostensibly an oligarch until his death, he was in reality one of the
most valuable of our agents. Often and often has the Iron Heel been
dumbfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and operations against us.
If it but knew the number of its own members who are our agents, it
would understand. Young Wickson never wavered in his loyalty to the
Cause. I