ation against
which the police are powerless. I am an involuntary member of it, and I
know its power. It has constrained me and it has constrained others, and
no one who has opposed it once has lived to do so twice. Yet it has
no recognized head (though there is a chief to whom we may address
ourselves), and it has no oaths of secrecy. All is left to the
discretion of its members, and _to their fears_. The object of this
society is the breaking of the power of the North, and the means by
which it works is _death_. I joined it under a stress of feeling I
called patriotism, and I believed myself right till the sword was
directed against my own breast. Then I quailed; then I began to ask
by what right we poor mortals constitute ourselves into instruments of
destruction to our kind, and having once stopped to question, I saw
the whole matter in such a different light that I knowingly put a
stumbling-block in the path of so-called avenging justice, and thus
courted the doom that at any moment may fall upon my head." And she
actually looked up, as if expecting to see it fall then and there.
"This Madame," she went on in breathless haste, "is doubtless one of the
members. How so grotesque and yet redoubtable an individuality should
have become identified with a cause demanding the coolest judgment as
well as the most acute political acumen, I cannot stop to conjecture.
But that she is a member of our organization, and an important one, too,
her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient
proof, even had you not seen my ring on her finger. Perhaps, incredible
as it may appear, she is the _chief_. If so--But I do not make myself
intelligible," she continued, meeting my eyes. "I will be more explicit.
One peculiar feature of this organization is the complete ignorance
which we all have concerning our fellow-members. We can reveal nothing,
for we know nothing. I know that I am allied to a cause which has for
its end the destruction of all who oppose the supremacy of the South,
but I cannot give you the name of another person attached to this
organization, though I feel the pressure of their combined power upon
every act of my life. _You_ may be a member without my knowing it--a
secret and fearful thought, which forms one of the greatest safeguards
to the institution, though it has failed in this instance, owing"--here
her voice fell--"to my devotion to the man I love. What?"--(I had not
spoken; my heart was dyi