of us has but one thing to do, and to do this
successfully he has pledged his life. No man can do more."

The eleven disciples, as they separated after the crucifixion, each to
pursue a separate course, inaugurated the preaching of a great and
potential religion, and their work is the most momentous in history. So
it may prove that this Nineteenth Century aggregation of men united for
the purpose of benefiting their fellowmen, is of tantamount influence on
the human race.

From acting as component parts in a body that exists as a moral protest
against the wrongs of the world and the unrelenting hands of the
usurpers of the right of the people, these forty men go forth as an army
of crusaders.

On the committee of forty there is not a man who has not argued his
conscience into a state of appreciation of the worthiness of the action
he is to perform.

It is past midnight. Two months from this date, on October thirteenth,
the fulfillment of the vows the men have taken, must be made. In the
sixty days that are to intervene will any of these intrepid wills bend
under the pressure of mental anxiety? Will any of them prove a modern
Judas?

Nevins is the last to quit the store-room. He is nervous, almost
hysterical; his thin classical features are distorted and tense, as
though he were undergoing actual physical pain. And indeed to his
sensitive nature, the events of the night are sufficient to unnerve his
mind and body.

He is to meet Carl Metz and Hendrick Stahl in the morning, to start for
the East.

"The syndicate of annihilation is now incorporated," he observes, half
aloud. "I am no longer the promoter; now I assume a place as one of the
avengers of the people. God alone knows how repugnant this plan for
physical vengeance is to me, yet it is better than to permit a storm of
anarchy to come upon us. And the conditions that exist cannot long
continue."

Although every man has been called upon to make a personal sacrifice
there is none who makes a greater one than he. It is not alone the
relinquishment of his position in the world as a patient and industrious
worker; his sacrifice of love; the obliteration of his hope for
preferment, but the extinction of life itself at an age when all men
cherish it most highly.

Nevins is in the heyday of manhood; his forty years and six having been
spent in the perfection of his mental and physical forces. He is
equipped with a quick, perceptive brain that grasps the intrica