“What can law, what can selfish greed, what can self-aggrandizement and the most pitiless ambition effect against men who own to such discipline as this?  Nothing.  The world will go on, you will try your little ways, your petty reforms, your slow-moving legislation and promise of justice to the weak, but the invincible is the ready; ready to act; ready to suffer, ready to die so that God is justified of his children and man lifted into brotherhood and equality.  You cannot strive against the unseen and the fearless.  The Cause will triumph though all else fails.  Georgian, I am sorry—­” He was tottering now, but he held them back with a stern gesture, “I don’t think I ever knew just what love was.  There is one way—­only one—­”

But from those lips the explanation of this one way never came.  As they saw the change in him and rushed to his support, his head fell forward on his breast and all was over.

CHAPTER XXX

NOT YET

They had laid him on the bed and Mr. Harper, in his usual practical way, was hastening to rouse the house, when Georgian stepped before him and laid her hand upon the door.

“Not yet,” said she with authority.  “He said there was a way—­let us find it before we give up our secret and our possible safety.  Mr. Harper, have you guessed that way?”

“No, except the usual one of protection through the law which he scouts.  I do not believe, Mrs. Ransom, in any other being necessary.  Your brother’s threats answered a very good purpose while he was alive, but now that he is dead they need not trouble you.  I’m not even sure that I believe in the organization.  It was mostly in your brother’s brain, Mrs. Ransom; there’s no such band, or if there is, its powers are not so unlimited as he would make you believe.”

She simply pointed to the motionless form and the distorted face which were slowly assuming an expression of great majesty.

“There is my answer,” said she.  “Men of his strong attributes do not kill themselves from fancy.  He knew what he did.”

“And you think—­”

“That I will not live a week if I pass that door under the name of Georgian Ransom.  Mr. Harper, I am sure of it; Roger, I beg you to believe what I say.  It may not come here—­but it will come.  The mark has been set against my name.  Death only will obliterate this mark.  But the name—­that is already a dead one—­shall it not stay so?—­It is the one way—­the way he meant.”

“Georgian!”

It was a cry of infinite protest.  Such a cry as one might expect from the long-suffering Ransom.  It drew her from the door; it brought her to his side.  As their eyes and hands met, Harper stepped back to the bedside, and remembering the sensitiveness of the man before him, softly covered his poor face.  When he turned back, Mrs. Ransom was slowly shaking her head under her husband’s prolonged look and saying softly: