been none the less binding had she
only had her own beauty to enforce it. As she spoke the President and
Colston--who had only lost himself for the time behind a mask and
cloak--came up to Arnold and asked him if he was prepared to give an
exhibition of the powers of his model, and to explain its working and
construction to the Circle at once.

He replied that everything was perfectly ready for the trial, and
that he would set the model working for them in a few minutes. The
President then told him that the exhibition should take place in
another room, where there would be much more space than where they
were, and bade him bring the box and follow him.

A door was now opened in the wall of the room remote from that by
which he and Colston had entered, and through this the whole party
went down a short passage, and through another door at the end which
opened into a very large apartment, which, from the fact of its being
windowless, Arnold rightly judged to be underground, like the
Council-chamber that they had just left.

A single glance was enough to show him the chief purpose to which the
chamber was devoted. The wall at one end was covered with arm-racks
containing all the newest and most perfect makes of rifles and
pistols; while at the other end, about twenty paces distant, were
three electric signalling targets, graded, as was afterwards
explained to him, to one, three, and five hundred yards range.

In a word, the chamber was an underground range for rifle and pistol
practice, in which a volley could have been fired without a sound
being heard ten yards away. It was here that the accuracy of the
various weapons invented from time to time was tested; and here, too,
every member of the Circle, man and woman, practised with rifle and
pistol until an infallible aim was acquired. A register of scores was
kept, and at the head of it stood the name of Radna Michaelis.

A long table ran across the end at which the arm-racks were, and on
this Arnold laid the case containing the model, he standing on one
side of the table, and the members of the Circle on the other,
watching his movements with a curiosity that they took no trouble to
disguise.

He opened the case, feeling something like a scientific demonstrator,
with an advanced and critical class before him. In a moment the man
disappeared, and the mechanician and the enthusiast took his place.
As each part was taken out and laid upon the table, he briefly
explai