ains and the commanders.

On the other hand, the system was equally convenient for the
transmission of orders from headquarters. An order given to ten
commanders of brigades could, in a single night, be transmitted
individually to the whole of the Section, and yet those in command of
the various divisions would not know whence the orders came, save as
regards their immediate superiors.

It will be necessary for the reader to bear these few particulars in
mind in order to understand future developments, which, without them,
might seem to border on the impossible. It is only necessary to add
that the full fighting strength of the four Sections of the
Brotherhood amounted to about twelve millions of men, a considerable
proportion of whom were serving as soldiers in the armies of the
League and the Alliance, and that in its cosmopolitan aspect it was
known to the rank and file as the Red International, whose members
knew each other only by the possession of a little knot of red ribbon
tied into the button-hole in a peculiar fashion on occasions of
meetings for instruction or drill.

The three lights burning in the form of a triangle in the window of
the house were a prearranged signal to avoid mistake on the part of
those on board the air-ship. When they reached the earth, Arnold,
acting under the instructions of Tremayne, who was his superior on
land though his voluntary subordinate when afloat, left the
_Ithuriel_ and her crew in charge of Lieutenant Marston and Andrew
Smith, the coxswain.

The remainder disembarked, and then the air-ship rose from the ground
and ascended out of sight through a layer of clouds that hung some
eight hundred feet above the high ground of the hills. Lieutenant
Marston's orders were to remain out of sight for an hour and then
return.

Arnold had not seen Natasha for several hours previous to the
landing, and he noticed with wonder, by no means unmixed with
something very like anger, that she looked a great deal more cheerful
than she had done during the voyage. She had preserved her composure
all through, but the effort of restraint had been visible. Now this
had vanished, although the supreme hour of the sacrifice that her
father had commanded her to make was actually at hand. When her feet
touched the earth she looked round with a smile on her lips and a
flush on her cheeks, and said, in a voice in which there was no
perceptible trace of anxiety or suffering--

"So this is the place