Murdo. "For myself I
am loyal to the lodge, and so I tell you straight; but I would be a
poor creature if I were to repeat to any other what you might say to me
in confidence. It will go no further than me; though I warn you that
you may get neither help nor sympathy."

"I have given up looking for either the one or the other," said Morris.
"I may be putting my very life in your hands by what I say; but, bad as
you are--and it seemed to me last night that you were shaping to be as
bad as the worst--still you are new to it, and your conscience cannot
yet be as hardened as theirs. That was why I thought to speak with you."

"Well, what have you to say?"

"If you give me away, may a curse be on you!"

"Sure, I said I would not."

"I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman's society in
Chicago and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it cross your
mind that you might find it would lead you to crime?"

"If you call it crime," McMurdo answered.

"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 dry goods 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, i