So it was arranged, when I was released at the end of six months, that I was to disappear and prepare a secure hiding-place for Ernest.  To disappear was in itself no easy thing.  No sooner did I get my freedom than my footsteps began to be dogged by the spies of the Iron Heel.  It was necessary that they should be thrown off the track, and that I should win to California.  It is laughable, the way this was accomplished.

Already the passport system, modelled on the Russian, was developing.  I dared not cross the continent in my own character.  It was necessary that I should be completely lost if ever I was to see Ernest again, for by trailing me after he escaped, he would be caught once more.  Again, I could not disguise myself as a proletarian and travel.  There remained the disguise of a member of the Oligarchy.  While the arch-oligarchs were no more than a handful, there were myriads of lesser ones of the type, say, of Mr. Wickson—­men, worth a few millions, who were adherents of the arch-oligarchs.  The wives and daughters of these lesser oligarchs were legion, and it was decided that I should assume the disguise of such a one.  A few years later this would have been impossible, because the passport system was to become so perfect that no man, woman, nor child in all the land was unregistered and unaccounted for in his or her movements.

When the time was ripe, the spies were thrown off my track.  An hour later Avis Everhard was no more.  At that time one Felice Van Verdighan, accompanied by two maids and a lap-dog, with another maid for the lap-dog,* entered a drawing-room on a Pullman,** and a few minutes later was speeding west.

* This ridiculous picture well illustrates the heartless conduct of the masters.  While people starved, lap-dogs were waited upon by maids.  This was a serious masquerade on the part of Avis Everhard.  Life and death and the Cause were in the issue; therefore the picture must be accepted as a true picture.  It affords a striking commentary of the times.

     ** Pullman—­the designation of the more luxurious railway
     cars of the period and so named from the inventor.

The three maids who accompanied me were revolutionists.  Two were members of the Fighting Groups, and the third, Grace Holbrook, entered a group the following year, and six months later was executed by the Iron Heel.  She it was who waited upon the dog.  Of the other two, Bertha Stole disappeared twelve years later, while Anna Roylston still lives and plays an increasingly important part in the Revolution.*

* Despite continual and almost inconceivable hazards, Anna Roylston lived to the royal age of ninety-one.  As the Pococks defied the executioners of the Fighting Groups, so she defied the executioners of the Iron Heel.  She bore a charmed life and prospered amid dangers and alarms.  She herself was an executioner for the Fighting Groups, and, known as the Red Virgin, she became