uite another thing to deliberately carry out a plan
that taxes the will, the heart and the conscience, and that too, totally
unaided by the presence or sympathy of others. This is what these forty
men have determined it is their duty to perform.

Nevins is in New York to receive reports from the members of the
Committee. A month has passed since their departure from Chicago. From
most of the men he receives letters in which they tell of their success.
No mention is made of the men to whom they are assigned, yet the reports
seem to assure Nevins that the plan will not miscarry.

"I have twice been sorely tempted to abandon my mission," writes Horace
Turner, the plain, honest Wisconsin farmer. "My heart and not my
conscience has been weak. But strength of purpose has come to me. I
realize that our undertaking is one that the populace will not sanction
at the start; it is not one that we can hope to make acceptable to the
public mind until it comes to a successful issue.

"The world does not look with favor upon reforms or revolutions until
they are accomplished facts. And this is the reason history records the
events of every advance of man in letters of blood. This advance is not
to be an exception in this point so far as the spilling of blood is
concerned; it is to be exceptional in regard to the quantity that is to
be sacrificed.

"The revolutions in politics that have preceded it, the reformations in
religion, have necessitated the butchery of thousands of men and women;
the overturning of existing conditions and the impediment of the human
race for generations.

"This reformation will measure its sacrificial blood in drops. It will
have as many martyrs as it had tyrants."

It is the preponderance of reasons in favor of their adhering to their
oaths that prevents the members of the Committee of Annihilation from
faltering.

At forty points through the world these unheralded crusaders are
silently arranging their campaigns against the enemies of the common
weal. For the most part the men who have been named on the proscribed
list are residents of the chief city of their respective states; they
are men who have walked the path of life rough-shod and have stepped to
their exalted positions over the prostrate forms of their fellowmen.
They are what the world is pleased to call the "Princes of Commerce."

To become acquainted with the habits of his quarry; to fix upon a plan
for inflicting death upon him, which wi