, in a tone so low that it could
scarcely be heard. "I wouldn't have come here to-night at all if I
hadn't been assured on the level that it would be perfectly safe to do
so. I don't think there is any one of you in this room except Madge
herself who knows me, but you will all hear from me later on as sure as
I'm alive and can escape arrest.

"You may have been told since you came here that I have just escaped
from prison, or if you haven't been told it, and know how to read, you
have probably seen the rewards for my recapture. You will know, too,
that I was sent up for croaking another chap, or, as they call it in the
courts, for murder. I want you all to know that I served eight years.
Eight years of hell, and that I've come out of there with the
determination of getting square with the man that sent me up. That man
was Nick Carter; and that's all I've got to say."

There was a moment of utter silence after this announcement, which had
in it many of the elements of the dramatic.

There was not a person in that room who had not seen the inside of a
prison, and many of them had served as many as four years, while others
had been in prison many times for short terms.

But to have just escaped from prison after having been confined for
eight long years seemed to them the climax of the possibilities of
hatred.

But the moment passed, and Madge fixed her eyes upon the seventh of the
group, who slowly rose to his feet and said:

"After what we've just heard, Madge, it doesn't seem that anything that
I can say can add to the intensity of feeling that pervades this
distinguished assembly. I regard it as quite an honor to be among those
who know so well how to hate. As for me, I have also been inside a
prison, to which this man Nick Carter sent me. I had been mixed up in a
little diamond robbery from one of the big firms in this town. I don't
know but maybe some of you heard about it; it was called the taking of
the pear-shaped diamonds, and at the time that happened I was in love
with a very beautiful girl, and was outwardly leading a very respectable
life. It's enough for me to say now that when the exposure that
followed Nick Carter's investigation of that case, and through it the
exposure of all my previous criminal record, which before that time I
had been able to conceal, the girl went back on me, and would have
nothing more to do with me. Now she is married to another man, and while
I don't blame her any, I do bla