I should wish to speak to you, but would rather not do so in yourhouse. You will find me beside the flagstaff upon Miller Hill. If youwill come there now, I have something which it is important for youto hear and for me to say.
McMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; forhe could not imagine what it meant or who was the author of it.
Had it been in a feminine hand, he might have imagined that itwas the beginning of one of those adventures which had beenfamiliar enough in his past life. But it was the writing of a man,and of a well educated one, too. Finally, after some hesitation, hedetermined to see the matter through.
Miller Hill is an ill-kept public park in the very centre of thetown. In summer it is a favourite resort of the people, but inwinter it is desolate enough. From the top of it one has a viewnot only of the whole straggling, grimy town, but of the windingvalley beneath, with its scattered mines and factories blackeningthe snow on each side of it, and of the wooded and white-cappedranges flanking it.
McMurdo strolled up the winding path hedged in withevergreens until he reached the deserted restaurant which formsthe centre of summer gaiety. Beside it was a bare flagstaff, andunderneath it a man, his hat drawn down and the collar of hisovercoat turned up. When he turned his face McMurdo sawthat it was Brother Morris, he who had incurred the anger ofthe Bodymaster the night before. The lodge sign was given andexchanged as they met.
“I wanted to have a word with you, Mr. McMurdo,” said theolder man, speaking with a hesitation which showed that he wason delicate ground. “It was kind of you to come.”
“Why did you not put your name to the note?”
“One has to be cautious, mister. One never knows in times likethese how a thing may come back to one. One never knows eitherwho to trust or who not to trust.”
“Surely one may trust brothers of the lodge.”
“No, no, not always,” cried Morris with vehemence. “Whateverwe say, even what we think, seems to go back to that manMcGinty.”
“Look here!” said McMurdo sternly. “It was only last night, asyou know well, that I swore good faith to our Bodymaster. Wouldyou be asking me to break my oath?”
“If that is the view you take,” said Morris sadly, “I can only saythat I am sorry I gave you the trouble to come and meet me.
Things have come to a bad pass when two free citizens cannotspeak their thoughts to each other.”
McMurdo, who had been watching his companion very narrowly,relaxed somewhat in his bearing. “Sure I spoke for myself only,”
said he. “I am a newcomer, as you know, and I am strange to it all.
It is not for me to open my mouth, Mr. Morris, and if you thinkwell to say anything to me I am here to hear it.”
“And to take it back to Boss McGinty!” said Morris bitterly.
“Indeed, then, you do me injustice there,” cried McMurdo.
“For myself I am loyal to the lodge, and so I tell you straight; butI would be a poor creature if I were to repeat to any other whatyou might say to me in confidence. It will go no further than me;though I warn you that you may get neither help nor sympathy.”
“I have given up looking for either the one or the other,” saidMorris. “I may be putting my very life in your hands by what I say;but, bad as you are—and it seemed to me last night that you wereshaping to be as bad as the worst—still you are new to it, and yourconscience cannot yet be as hardened as theirs. That was why Ithought to speak with you.”
“Well, what have you to say?”
“If you give me away, may a curse be on you!”
“Sure, I said I would not.”
“I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman’s societyin Chicago and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it crossyour mind that you might find it would lead you to crime?”
“If you call it crime,” McMurdo answered.
“Call it crime!” cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion.
“You have seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was itcrime last night when a man old enough to be your father wasbeaten till the blood dripped from his white hairs? Was thatcrime—or what else would you call it?”
“There are some would say it was war,” said McMurdo, “a war oftwo classes with all in, so that each struck as best it could.”
“Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined theFreeman’s society at Chicago?”
“No, I’m bound to say I did not.”
“Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a benefitclub and a meeting place for one’s fellows. Then I heard of thisplace—curse the hour that the name first fell upon my ears!—andI came to better myself! My God! to better myself! My wife andthree children came with me. I started a drygoods store on MarketSquare, and I prospered well. The word had gone round that Iwas a Freeman, and I was forced to join the local lodge, same asyou did last night. I’ve the badge of shame on my forearm andsomething worse branded on my heart. I found that I was underthe orders of a black villain and caught in a meshwork of crime.
What could I do? Every word I said to make things better wastaken as treason, same as it was last night. I can’t get away; for allI have in the world is in my store. If I leave the society, I knowwell that it means murder to me, and God knows what to my wifeand children. Oh, man, it is awful—awful!” He put his hands to hisface, and his body shook with convulsive sobs.
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. “You were too soft for thejob,” said he. “You are the wrong sort for such work.”
“I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminalamong them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down I knewwell what would come to me. Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe it’s thethought of my poor little woman and the children that makes meone. Anyhow I went. I guess it will haunt me forever.
“It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the rangeyonder. I was told off for the door, same as you were last night.
They could not trust me with the job. The others went in. Whenthey came out their hands were crimson to the wrists. As weturned away a child was screaming out of the house behind us.