that work so well organized and boldly carried out should all
have gone for nothing! Warned by the fate of the various victims, and
knowing that he was marked down for destruction, Chester Wilcox had
moved himself and his family only the day before to some safer and less
known quarters, where a guard of police should watch over them. It was
an empty house which had been torn down by the gunpowder, and the grim
old colour sergeant of the war was still teaching discipline to the
miners of Iron Dike.

"Leave him to me," said McMurdo. "He's my man, and I'll get him sure if
I have to wait a year for him."

A vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for
the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in the
papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an open
secret that McMurdo was still at work upon his unfinished job.

Such were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such were the deeds
of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule of fear over the great
and rich district which was for so long a period haunted by their
terrible presence. Why should these pages be stained by further crimes?
Have I not said enough to show the men and their methods?

These deeds are written in history, and there are records wherein one
may read the details of them. There one may learn of the shooting of
Policemen Hunt and Evans because they had ventured to arrest two members
of the society--a double outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge and
carried out in cold blood upon two helpless and disarmed men. There also
one may read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing her
husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of Boss McGinty.
The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by that of his
brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the
Staphouse family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon
one another in the same terrible winter.

Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with
running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature bound
so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the men and
women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the cloud above
them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of the year 1875.

Chapter 6--Danger

It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already
been appointed Inner Deacon, with e