.

"Call it crime!" cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion. "You
have seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was it crime
last night when a man old enough to be your father was beaten till the
blood dripped from his white hairs? Was that crime--or what else would
you call it?"

"There are some would say it was war," said McMurdo, "a war of two
classes with all in, so that each struck as best it could."

"Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined the Freeman's
society at Chicago?"

"No, I'm bound to say I did not."

"Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a benefit club
and a meeting place for one's fellows. Then I heard of this place--curse
the hour that the name first fell upon my ears!--and I came to better
myself! My God! to better myself! My wife and three children came with
me. I started a drygoods store on Market Square, and I prospered well.
The word had gone round that I was a Freeman, and I was forced to join
the local lodge, same as you did last night. I've the badge of shame on
my forearm and something worse branded on my heart. I found that I was
under the orders of a black villain and caught in a meshwork of crime.
What could I do? Every word I said to make things better was taken as
treason, same as it was last night. I can't get away; for all I have in
the world is in my store. If I leave the society, I know well that it
means murder to me, and God knows what to my wife and children. Oh, man,
it is awful--awful!" He put his hands to his face, and his body shook
with convulsive sobs.

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "You were too soft for the job," said
he. "You are the wrong sort for such work."

"I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminal among
them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down I knew well what would
come to me. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe it's the thought of my poor little
woman and the children that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess it will
haunt me forever.

"It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the range yonder.
I was told off for the door, same as you were last night. They could
not trust me with the job. The others went in. When they came out
their hands were crimson to the wrists. As we turned away a child was
screaming out of the house behind us. It was a boy of five who had seen
his father murdered. I nearly fainted with the horror of it, and yet I
had to keep a bold and smiling face; for w