them.

"That these deeds are the work of the officials of the tribunals we have
no doubt. The sooner we strike the better. Matters are getting ripe. I
have eight men sworn into my section among the weavers, and need but
two more to complete it. We will instruct our latest recruit to raise
a section among the fishermen. The sons of the man just murdered should
form a nucleus. We agreed from the first that three hundred resolute
men besides ourselves were required, and that each of us should raise
a section of ten. Malchus brings up our number here to thirty, and when
all the sections are filled up we shall be ready for action.

"Failure ought to be impossible. The houses of Hanno and thirty of his
party will be attacked, and the tyrants slain before any alarm can be
given. Another thirty at least should be slain before the town is fairly
aroused. Maybe each section can undertake three if our plans are well
laid, and each chooses for attack three living near each other. We have
not yet settled whether it will be better to separate when this is
done, content with the first blow against our tyrants, or to prepare
beforehand for a popular rising, to place ourselves at the head of the
populace, and to make a clean sweep of the judges and the leaders of
Hanno's party."

Giscon spoke in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone, as if he were
discussing the arrangements of a party of pleasure; but Malchus could
scarcely repress a movement of anxiety as he heard this proposal for the
wholesale destruction of the leading men of Carthage. The council thus
opened was continued for three hours. Most of those present spoke, but,
to the surprise of Malchus, there was an entire absence of that gloom
and mystery with which the idea of a state conspiracy was associated in
his mind.

The young men discussed it earnestly, indeed, but in the same spirit
in which they would have agreed over a disputed question as to the
respective merits of two horses. They laughed, joked, offered and
accepted wagers and took the whole matter with a lightness of heart
which Malchus imitated to the best of his power, but which he was very
far from feeling; and yet he felt that beneath all this levity his
companions were perfectly in earnest in their plans, but they joked now
as they would have joked before the commencement of a battle in which
the odds against them were overwhelming and great.

Even Giscon, generally grave and gloomy, was as light hearted as the