ed round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. "Who
will volunteer for the job?"

Several young fellows held up their hands. The Bodymaster looked at them
with an approving smile.

"You'll do, Tiger Cormac. If you handle it as well as you did the last,
you won't be wrong. And you, Wilson."

"I've no pistol," said the volunteer, a mere boy in his teens.

"It's your first, is it not? Well, you have to be blooded some time. It
will be a great start for you. As to the pistol, you'll find it waiting
for you, or I'm mistaken. If you report yourselves on Monday, it will be
time enough. You'll get a great welcome when you return."

"Any reward this time?" asked Cormac, a thick-set, dark-faced,
brutal-looking young man, whose ferocity had earned him the nickname of
"Tiger."

"Never mind the reward. You just do it for the honour of the thing.
Maybe when it is done there will be a few odd dollars at the bottom of
the box."

"What has the man done?" asked young Wilson.

"Sure, it's not for the likes of you to ask what the man has done. He
has been judged over there. That's no business of ours. All we have to
do is to carry it out for them, same as they would for us. Speaking of
that, two brothers from the Merton lodge are coming over to us next week
to do some business in this quarter."

"Who are they?" asked someone.

"Faith, it is wiser not to ask. If you know nothing, you can testify
nothing, and no trouble can come of it. But they are men who will make a
clean job when they are about it."

"And time, too!" cried Ted Baldwin. "Folk are gettin' out of hand in
these parts. It was only last week that three of our men were turned
off by Foreman Blaker. It's been owing him a long time, and he'll get it
full and proper."

"Get what?" McMurdo whispered to his neighbour.

"The business end of a buckshot cartridge!" cried the man with a loud
laugh. "What think you of our ways, Brother?"

McMurdo's criminal soul seemed to have already absorbed the spirit of
the vile association of which he was now a member. "I like it well,"
said he. "'Tis a proper place for a lad of mettle."

Several of those who sat around heard his words and applauded them.

"What's that?" cried the black-maned Bodymaster from the end of the
table.

"'Tis our new brother, sir, who finds our ways to his taste."

McMurdo rose to his feet for an instant. "I would say, Eminent
Bodymaster, that if a man should be wanted I should take it as an honou