feelings of men should be directed against
him, without the intervention of any material agent, by the mere will
of those who take no traceable means to give that will effect. At the
same time, tradition and even authentic history record, what
experience confirms, that every one who has wronged us deeply has come
to some terrible, awe-striking end. Each man would ridicule heartily a
neighbour who should allege such a ground for fearing to injure one of
us; but there is none who is so true to his own unbelief as to do that
which, in every instance, has been followed by signal and awful
disaster. Moreover, we do by visible symbols suggest a relation
between the vengeance and the crime. Over the heart of criminals who
have paid with their lives, no matter by what immediate agency, for
wrong to us, is found after death the image of a small blood-red star;
the only case in which any of our sacred symbols are exposed to
profane eyes."

"Surely," I said, "in the course of generations, and with your
numbers, you must be often watched and traced; and some one spy, on
one out of a million occasions, must have found access to your
meetings and heard and seen all that passed."

"Our meetings," he said, "are held where no human eye can possibly
see, no human ear hear what passes. The Chambers meet in apartments
concealed within the dwellings of individual members. When we meet the
doors are guarded, and can be passed only by those who give a token
and a password. And if these could become known to an enemy, the
appearance of a stranger would lead to questions that would at once
expose his ignorance of our simplest secrets. He would learn nothing,
and would never tell his story to the outer world." ...

Opening the door, or rather window, of his private chamber, Esmo
directed our eyes to a portrait sunk in the wall, and usually
concealed by a screen which fitted exactly the level and the patterns
of the general surface. It displayed, in a green vesture not unlike
his own, but with a gold ribbon and emerald symbol like the cross of
an European knighthood over the right shoulder, a spare soldierly
form, with the most striking countenance I have ever seen; one which,
once seen, none could forget. The white long hair and beard, the
former reaching the shoulders, the latter falling to the belt, were
not only unlike the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age
never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years.