e you have sworn to forward. I
shall bring my proofs, and I shall leave you to justify yourself as best
you may. What the consequence of that step may be it is for you and not
for me to calculate. I will give you five minutes in which to make up
your mind."

"You can do what the devil you please," he said; and I rang the bell.
Hinge came in, and I bade him go out and call a cab. He obeyed, and
taking a seat at the table I began to write out a series of addresses.
I read them aloud to Brunow when I had finished, and he recognized the
names of half a dozen of the most resolute of our leaders.

"You are playing with your own life!" I cried. "You have only to tell
the truth to have a chance for it. You have only to go on lying in this
futile way to throw your last chance into the gutter. I will palter with
you no longer, and unless by the time at which Hinge returns you have
made a clean breast of it, I shall send for the men whose names
are here, I shall bring my charge, and you will have to stand the
consequences."

"You can commit any folly you please," he answered. "I've nothing to say
to you; and if you choose to excite the suspicions of a lot of foreign
scum like that, you can do it, and take the responsibility."

"Very well," I said, and the room was dead still for a space of, I
should say, four or five minutes; then the rumble of a cab was heard in
the street and a step upon the stairs. It was a dreadful minute alike
for Brunow and myself, and, looking at him, I felt a resurrection of
pity in me.

"Is this bravado worth while any longer, Brunow?" I asked him. "I have
no resource but to keep my word. If my man enters the room before you
have spoken, he shall go on his errand, and then may Heaven have mercy
on the soul of a traitor!"

Hinge's footstep came nearer, and his key touched the lock with a smart
click. Brunow rose to his feet as if without any volition of his own,
and made a sign with his hand against the door.

"You wish him to remain outside?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, and, falling back into the chair from which he had
arisen, covered his white face with both hands. He had allowed his
burning cigar to fall upon the carpet, and, a faint odor of acrid smoke
reaching my nostrils, I looked for it, found it, and threw it into the
empty grate. This trivial action seemed as important at the moment as
anything else.

Hinge knocked at the door, but I told him to go down-stairs, and to
detain the cab unt