"I feared this," said the president. "You are mistaken. We don't always escape detection. Sometimes we are caught—"
"Caught?"
"Yes, and hanged."
"But if that is so, why does it not get into the papers?"
"The papers are full of it."
Andrew looked incredulous.
"In the present state of the law," said the president, "motive in a murder goes for nothing. However iniquitous this may be—and I do not attempt to defend it—we accept it as a fact. Your motives may have been unexceptionable, but they hang you all the same. Thus our members when apprehended preserve silence on this point, or say that they are Fenians. This is to save the society. The man who got fifteen years the other day for being found near St. Stephen's with six infernal machines in his pockets was really one of us. He was taking them to be repaired."
"And the other who got ten years the week before?"
"He was from America, but it was for one of our affairs that he was sentenced. He was quite innocent. You see the dynamiters, vulgarly so called, are playing into our hands. Suspicion naturally falls on them. He was our fifth."
"I had no idea of this," murmured Andrew.