“What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?” he asked.

“It is in this letter which has come into my hands,” said McMurdo.  Me read the passage aloud.  “It is a matter of honour with me that I can give no further particulars about the letter, nor put it into your hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else in it which can affect the interests of the lodge.  I put the case before you as it has reached me.”

“Let me say, Mr. Chairman,” said one of the older brethren, “that I have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best man in the Pinkerton service.”

“Does anyone know him by sight?” asked McGinty.

“Yes,” said McMurdo, “I do.”

There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.

“I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands,” he continued with an exulting smile upon his face.  “If we act quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing short.  If I have your confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear.”

“What have we to fear, anyhow?  What can he know of our affairs?”

“You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor.  But this man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back.  Do you think there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that could not be bought?  He will get at our secrets—­maybe has got them already.  There’s only one sure cure.”

“That he never leaves the valley,” said Baldwin.

McMurdo nodded.  “Good for you, Brother Baldwin,” he said.  “You and I have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night.”

“Where is he, then?  Where shall we know him?”

“Eminent Bodymaster,” said McMurdo, earnestly, “I would put it to you that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge.  God forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears of this man, there would be an end of any chance of our getting him.  I would ask the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman—­ yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and five more.  Then I can talk freely of what I know and of what I advise should be done.”

The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen.  Besides the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing.

The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued:  for there was a cloud upon the men’s spirits, and many there for the first time began to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long.  The horrors they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling now that it came so closely upon them.  They broke up early and left their leaders to their council.