members when any serious business was afoot, so that a crime might be
done by men who were strangers to the locality. Altogether there were
not less than five hundred scattered over the coal district.

In the bare assembly room the men were gathered round a long table. At
the side was a second one laden with bottles and glasses, on which some
members of the company were already turning their eyes. McGinty sat at
the head with a flat black velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black
hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to
be a priest presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left
of him were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted
Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion as emblem
of his office.

They were, for the most part, men of mature age; but the rest of the
company consisted of young fellows from eighteen to twenty-five, the
ready and capable agents who carried out the commands of their seniors.
Among the older men were many whose features showed the tigerish,
lawless souls within; but looking at the rank and file it was difficult
to believe that these eager and open-faced young fellows were in very
truth a dangerous gang of murderers, whose minds had suffered such
complete moral perversion that they took a horrible pride in their
proficiency at the business, and looked with deepest respect at the man
who had the reputation of making what they called "a clean job."

To their contorted natures it had become a spirited and chivalrous thing
to volunteer for service against some man who had never injured them,
and whom in many cases they had never seen in their lives. The crime
committed, they quarrelled as to who had actually struck the fatal
blow, and amused one another and the company by describing the cries and
contortions of the murdered man.

At first they had shown some secrecy in their arrangements; but at
the time which this narrative describes their proceedings were
extraordinarily open, for the repeated failure of the law had proved to
them that, on the one hand, no one would dare to witness against them,
and on the other they had an unlimited number of stanch witnesses upon
whom they could call, and a well-filled treasure chest from which they
could draw the funds to engage the best legal talent in the state. In
ten long years of outrage there had been no single conviction, and
the only danger that ever threatened the Scow