One of the side lights of the great drama that is being enacted is the sentiment that develops for the Committee of Forty. Memorial societies in the states from which the several committeemen hailed, are formed to give the martyrs, as the forty are now called, a decent burial. Thirty-nine of the martyrs are thus honored by public interment.
The one missing committeeman is William Nevins. He is supposed to be buried in the wrecked tunnel under the English channel. It is impossible to repair the damage done by the explosion; futile efforts are made by sub-marine divers to locate the exact point at which the break in the tunnel was made. The action of the water has totally obliterated the breach. So to the public this watery grave must remain the resting place of the genius who conceived the plan for the restoration of the rights of man.
All of the details of the committee come to light through the papers found on the body of Hendrick Stahl, secretary of the committee. The fact that Nevins was alone responsible for the plan of annihilation and that Trueman knew absolutely nothing of it, is incontestibly established.
This takes away the last argument of the Plutocrats who seek to connect
Trueman with the act of Proscription.
And Nevins? What of him?
He has not kept his pledge to the committee by dying with the Transgressor who was assigned to him. His pledge to God, to follow the committee the day after the atonement, has not been kept.
When October fourteenth dawned, the news of the uprising of the people of Wilkes-Barre and of the part played by Trueman and Ethel, were read by Nevins from the cable dispatches at Calais.
A fear arose in his heart that the plan for the election of Trueman might fail. He delayed ending his life and hastened to New York. Upon his arrival he went as a lodger to a room in a lofty Bowery hotel. From this watch-tower he reviewed the political field. "I shall redeem my pledge to-morrow," he said to himself each day.
The night would find him irresolute, not for his fear of death, but for the dread that some unexpected occurrence might arise to thwart the people in their effort to carry the election by the peaceable use of the ballot.
On the flight before the election Nevins hastens to Chicago. In the crowd at the Independence Headquarters he mingles unobserved. "What news have you from California?" he asks of one of the press committee. This is thought to be the pivotal State. At least this is the claim made by the Plutocrats.