Jackson, who had lost his arm in the Sierra Mills and who had been the cause of my own conversion into a revolutionist, I never saw again; but we all knew what he did before he died.  He never joined the revolutionists.  Embittered by his fate, brooding over his wrongs, he became an anarchist—­not a philosophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad with hate and lust for revenge.  And well he revenged himself.  Evading the guards, in the nighttime while all were asleep, he blew the Pertonwaithe palace into atoms.  Not a soul escaped, not even the guards.  And in prison, while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself under his blankets.

Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford achieved quite different fates from that of Jackson.  They have been faithful to their salt, and they have been correspondingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they dwell at peace with the world.  Both are apologists for the Oligarchy.  Both have grown very fat.  “Dr. Hammerfield,” as Ernest once said, “has succeeded in modifying his metaphysics so as to give God’s sanction to the Iron Heel, and also to include much worship of beauty and to reduce to an invisible wraith the gaseous vertebrate described by Haeckel—­the difference between Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford being that the latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little more gaseous and a little less vertebrate.”

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills whom I encountered while investigating the case of Jackson, was a surprise to all of us.  In 1918 I was present at a meeting of the ’Frisco Reds.  Of all our Fighting Groups this one was the most formidable, ferocious, and merciless.  It was really not a part of our organization.  Its members were fanatics, madmen.  We dared not encourage such a spirit.  On the other hand, though they did not belong to us, we remained on friendly terms with them.  It was a matter of vital importance that brought me there that night.  I, alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only person unmasked.  After the business that brought me there was transacted, I was led away by one of them.  In a dark passage this guide struck a match, and, holding it close to his face, slipped back his mask.  For a moment I gazed upon the passion-wrought features of Peter Donnelly.  Then the match went out.

“I just wanted you to know it was me,” he said in the darkness.  “D’you remember Dallas, the superintendent?”

I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-face superintendent of the Sierra Mills.

“Well, I got him first,” Donnelly said with pride. “’Twas after that I joined the Reds.”

“But how comes it that you are here?” I queried.  “Your wife and children?”

“Dead,” he answered.  “That’s why.  No,” he went on hastily, “’tis not revenge for them.  They died easily in their beds—­sickness, you see, one time and another.  They tied my arms while they lived.  And now that they’re gone, ’tis revenge for my blasted manhood I’m after.  I was once Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman.  But to-night I’m Number 27 of the ’Frisco Reds.  Come on now, and I’ll get you out of this.”