"The future of the Republic is at stake," observes a third. "How will it all end?"
This is the question that is uppermost in the minds of all.
"There is no time left to weigh the effects of defeat," Nettinger asserts. "Each of us has but one thing to do, and to do this successfully he has pledged his life. No man can do more."
The eleven disciples, as they separated after the crucifixion, each to pursue a separate course, inaugurated the preaching of a great and potential religion, and their work is the most momentous in history. So it may prove that this Nineteenth Century aggregation of men united for the purpose of benefiting their fellowmen, is of tantamount influence on the human race.
From acting as component parts in a body that exists as a moral protest against the wrongs of the world and the unrelenting hands of the usurpers of the right of the people, these forty men go forth as an army of crusaders.
On the committee of forty there is not a man who has not argued his conscience into a state of appreciation of the worthiness of the action he is to perform.
It is past midnight. Two months from this date, on October thirteenth, the fulfillment of the vows the men have taken, must be made. In the sixty days that are to intervene will any of these intrepid wills bend under the pressure of mental anxiety? Will any of them prove a modern Judas?
Nevins is the last to quit the store-room. He is nervous, almost hysterical; his thin classical features are distorted and tense, as though he were undergoing actual physical pain. And indeed to his sensitive nature, the events of the night are sufficient to unnerve his mind and body.
He is to meet Carl Metz and Hendrick Stahl in the morning, to start for the East.
"The syndicate of annihilation is now incorporated," he observes, half aloud. "I am no longer the promoter; now I assume a place as one of the avengers of the people. God alone knows how repugnant this plan for physical vengeance is to me, yet it is better than to permit a storm of anarchy to come upon us. And the conditions that exist cannot long continue."