a tramp to an officer of the
Guards."

"It wouldn't take much change to accomplish the former, I'm afraid.
But, really, I couldn't think of trespassing so far on your
hospitality as to take your very clothes from you. I'm deep enough in
your debt already."

"Don't talk nonsense, Richard Arnold. The tone in which those last
words were said shows me that you have not duly laid to heart what I
said last night. There is no such thing as private property in the
Brotherhood, of which I hope, by this time to-morrow, you will be an
initiate.

"What I have here is mine only for the purposes of the Cause,
wherefore it is as much yours as mine, for to-day we are going on the
Brotherhood's business. Why, then, should you have any scruples about
wearing the Brotherhood's clothes? Now clear out and get tubbed, and
wash some of those absurd ideas out of your head."

"Well, as you put it that way, I don't mind, only remember that I
don't necessarily put on the principles of the Brotherhood with its
clothes."

So saying, Arnold got up from the sofa, stretched himself, and went
off to make his toilet.

When he sat down to breakfast with his host half an hour later, very
few who had seen him on the Embankment the night before would have
recognised him as the same man. The tailor, after all, does a good
deal to make the man, externally at least, and the change of clothes
in Arnold's case had transformed him from a superior looking tramp
into an aristocratic and decidedly good-looking man, in the prime of
his youth, saving only for the thinness and pallor of his face, and a
perceptible stoop in the shoulders.

During breakfast they chatted about their plans for the day, and then
drifted into generalities, chiefly of a political nature.

The better Arnold came to know Maurice Colston the more remarkable
his character appeared to him; and it was his growing wonder at the
contradictions that it exhibited that made him say towards the end of
the meal--

"I must say you're a queer sort of conspirator, Colston. My idea of
Nihilists and members of revolutionary societies has always taken the
form of silent, stealthy, cautious beings, with a lively distrust and
hatred of the whole human race outside their own circles. And yet
here are you, an active member of the most terrible secret society in
existence, pledged to the destruction of nearly every institution on
earth, and carrying your life in your hand, opening your heart like a
sch