is pipe, and was just
finishing his gin and soda-water, taken from Mr. Atkinson's private
store.

However, the lion so seldom roars when it is expected to roar. Instead
of the extraordinary creature whom Lord Evelyn had been describing,
Brand found merely an Irish newspaper-reporter, who was either tired, or
indifferent, or sleepy. They talked about some current topic of the hour
for a few minutes; and then Mr. O'Halloran, with a yawn, rose and said
he must go home for breakfast.

"Stay a bit, O'Halloran," Lord Evelyn said, in despair; "I--I
wanted--the fact is, Mr. Brand has been asking me about Ferdinand
Lind--"

"Oh," said the bushy-headed man, with a quick glance of scrutiny at the
tall Englishman. "No, no," he added, with a smile, addressing himself
directly to Brand, "it is no use your touching anything of that kind.
You would want to know too much. You would want to have the earth dug
away from over the catacombs before you went below to follow a solitary
guide with a bit of candle. You could never be brought to understand
that the cardinal principle of all secret societies has been that
obedience is an end and aim in itself, and faith the chiefest of all the
virtues. You wouldn't take anything on trust; you have the pure English
temperament."

Brand laughed, and said nothing. But O'Halloran sat down again, and
began to talk in an idle, hap-hazard sort of fashion of the various
secret societies, religious, social, political that had become known to
the world; and of their aims, and their working, and how they had so
often fallen away into the mere preservation of mummeries, or declared
themselves only by the commission of useless deeds of revenge.

"Ah," said Brand, eagerly, "that is precisely what I have been urging on
Lord Evelyn. How can you know, in joining such an association, that you
are not becoming the accomplices of men who are merely planning
assassination? And what good can come of that? How are you likely to
gain anything by the dagger? The great social and political changes of
the world come in tides; you can neither retard them nor help them by
sticking pins in the sand."

"I am not so sure," said the other, doubtfully. "A little wholesome
terrorism has sometimes played its part. The 1868 amnesty to the Poles
in Siberia was not so long after--not more than a year after, I
think--that little business of Berezowski. Faith, what a chance that man
had!"

"Who?"

"Berezowski," said he, with