sat down abruptly.

Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was
again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone--

"I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme."

"The amendment will, as usual, be put first," said Mr. Buttons, the
chairman, with mechanical rapidity.

"The question is that Comrade Syme--"

Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate.

"Comrades," he cried out, "I am not a madman."

"Oh, oh!" said Mr. Witherspoon.

"I am not a madman," reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity
which for a moment staggered the room, "but I give you a counsel which
you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I
can give you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad
command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do
not elect this man." Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for
a moment Syme's slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you
could not have guessed it from Syme's bleak blue eyes. He merely began--

"Comrade Gregory commands--"

Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory--

"Who are you? You are not Sunday;" and another anarchist added in a
heavier voice, "And you are not Thursday."

"Comrades," cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in an
ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, "it is nothing to me whether you
detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take my
command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at your
feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man."

"Comrade Gregory," said the chairman after a painful pause, "this is
really not quite dignified."

For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a real
silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a man,
and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly started
again--

"The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday on
the General Council."

The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three
minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was
elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the Anarchists
of Europe.

Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the
sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the
election was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received