say to discourage him.
"Someone else?" he would cry. "Well, the worse luck for someone else!
Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life's chance and all
my heart's desire for someone else? You can keep on saying no, Ettie:
the day will come when you will say yes, and I'm young enough to
wait."
He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his
pretty, coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of
experience and of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and
finally her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys of County
Monaghan from which he came, of the lovely, distant island, the low
hills and green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful when
imagination viewed them from this place of grime and snow.
Then he was versed in the life of the cities of the North, of
Detroit, and the lumber camps of Michigan, and finally of Chicago,
where he had worked in a planing mill. And afterwards came the hint
of romance, the feeling that strange things had happened to him in
that great city, so strange and so intimate that they might not be
spoken of. He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old
ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley,
and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with
sympathy--those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so
naturally to love.
McMurdo had obtained a temporary job as bookkeeper; for he was a
well-educated man. This kept him out most of the day, and he had not
found occasion yet to report himself to the head of the lodge of the
Eminent Order of Freemen. He was reminded of his omission, however,
by a visit one evening from Mike Scanlan, the fellow member whom he
had met in the train. Scanlan, the small, sharp-faced, nervous,
black-eyed man, seemed glad to see him once more. After a glass or
two of whisky he broached the object of his visit.
"Say, McMurdo," said he, "I remembered your address, so l made bold
to call. I'm surprised that you've not reported to the Bodymaster.
Why haven't you seen Boss McGinty yet?"
"Well, I had to find a job. I have been busy."
"You must find time for him if you have none for anything else. Good
Lord, man! you're a fool not to have been down to the Union House and
registered your name the first morning after you came here! If you
run against him--well, you mustn't, that's all!"
McMurdo showed mild surprise. "I've been a member of the lodge for
over two years, Scanlan, but I never heard that duties were so
pressing as all that."
"Maybe not in Chicago."
"Well, it's the same society here."
"Is it?"
Scanlan looked at him long and fixedly. There was something sinister
in his eyes.
"Isn't it?"
"You'll tell me that in a month's time. I hear you had a talk with
the patrolmen after I left the train."
"How did you know that?"
"Oh, it got about--things do get about for good and for bad in this
district."
"Well, yes. I told the hounds what I thought of them."
"By the Lord, you'll be a man after McGinty's heart!"
"What, does he hate the police too?"
Scanlan burst out laughing. "You go and see him, my lad," said he as
he took his leave. "It's not the police but you that he'll hate if
you don't! Now, take a friend's advice and go at once!"
It chanced that on the same evening McMurdo had another more pressing
interview which urged him in the same direction. It may have been
that his attentions to Ettie had been more evident than before, or
that they had gradually obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his
good German host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper
beckoned the young man into his private room and started on the
subject without any circumlocution.
"It seems to me, mister," said he, "that you are gettin' set on my
Ettie. Ain't that so, or am I wrong?"
"Yes, that is so," the young man answered.
"Vell, I vant to tell you right now that it ain't no manner of use.
There's someone slipped in afore you."
"She told me so."
"Vell, you can lay that she told you truth. But did she tell you who
it vas?"
"No, I asked her; but she wouldn't tell."
"I dare say not, the leetle baggage! Perhaps she did not vish to
frighten you avay."
"Frighten!" McMurdo was on fire in a moment.
"Ah, yes, my friend! You need not be ashamed to be frightened of him.
It is Teddy Baldwin."
"And who the devil is he?"
"He is a boss of Scowrers."
"Scowrers! I've heard of them before. It's Scowrers here and Scowrers
there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid of? Who are
the Scowrers?"
The boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as everyone
did who talked about that terrible society. "The Scowrers," said he,
"are the Eminent Order of Freemen!"
The young man stared. "Why, I am a member of that order myself."
"You! I vould never have had you in my house if I had known it--not
if you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a week."
"What's wrong with the order? It's for charity and good fellowship.
The rules say so."
"Maybe in some places. Not here!"
"What is it here?"
"It's a murder society, that's vat it is."
McMurdo laughed incredulously. "How can you prove that?" he asked.
"Prove it! Are there not fifty murders to prove it? Vat about Milman
and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson family, and old Mr. Hyam, and
little Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is there a man or a
voman in this valley vat does not know it?"
"See here!" said McMurdo earnestly. "I want you to take back what
you've said, or else make it good. One or the other you must do
before I quit this room. Put yourself in my place. Here am I, a
stranger in the town. I belong to a society that I know only as an
innocent one. You'll find it through the length and breadth of the
States, but always as an innocent one. Now, when I am counting upon
joining it here, you tell me that it is the same as a murder society
called the Scowrers. I guess you owe me either an apology or else an
explanation, Mr. Shafter."
"I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The bosses of
the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the one, it is the
other vat vill strike you. We have proved it too often."
"That's just gossip--I want proof!" said McMurdo.
"If you live here long you vill get your proof. But I forget that you
are yourself one of them. You vill soon be as bad as the rest. But
you vill find other lodgings, mister. I cannot have you here. Is it
not bad enough that one of these people come courting my Ettie, and
that I dare not turn him down, but that I should have another for my
boarder? Yes, indeed, you shall not sleep here after to-night!"
McMurdo found himself under sentence of banishment both from his
comfortable quarters and from the girl whom he loved. He found her
alone in the sitting-room that same evening, and he poured his
troubles into her ear.
"Sure, your father is after giving me notice," he said. "It's little
I would care if it was just my room, but indeed, Ettie, though it's
only a week that I've known you, you are the very breath of life to
me, and I can't live without you!"
"Oh, hush, Mr. McMurdo, don't speak so!" said the girl. "I have told
you, have I not, that you are too late? There is another, and if I
have not promised to marry him at once, at least I can promise no one
else."
"Suppose I had been first, Ettie, would I have had a chance?"
The girl sank her face into her hands. "I wish to heaven that you had
been first!" she sobbed.
McMurdo was down on his knees before her in an instant. "For God's
sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!" he cried. "Will you ruin your
life and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow your heart,
acushla! 'Tis a safer guide than any promise before you knew what it
was that you were saying."
He had seized Ettie's white hand between his own strong brown ones.
"Say that you will be mine, and we will face it out together!"
"Not here?"
"Yes, here."
"No, no, Jack!" His arms were round her now. "It could not be here.
Could you take me away?"
A struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo's face; but it ended by
setting like granite. "No, here," he said. "I'll hold you against the
world, Ettie, right here where we are!"
"Why should we not leave together?"
"No, Ettie, I can't leave here."
"But why?"
"I'd never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been driven
out. Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not free folks in
a free country? If you love me, and I you, who will dare to come
between?"
"You don't know, Jack. You've been here too short a time. You don't
know this Baldwin. You don't know McGinty and his Scowrers."
"No, I don't know them, and I don't fear them, and I don't believe in
them!" said McMurdo. "I've lived among rough men, my darling, and
instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared
me--always, Ettie. It's mad on the face of it! If these men, as your
father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if
everyone knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to
justice? You answer me that, Ettie!"
"Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a
month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear
that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely,
Jack, you must have read all this. I had understood that every paper
in the United States was writing about it."
"Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it was a
story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they
are wronged and have no other way to help themselves."
"Oh, Jack, don't let me hear you speak so! That is how he speaks--the
other one!"
"Baldwin--he speaks like that, does he?"
"And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell you the
truth. I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also. I fear
him for myself; but above all I fear him for father. I know that some
great sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say what I really felt.
That is why I have put him off with half-promises. It was in real
truth our only hope. But if you would fly with me, Jack, we could
take father with us and live forever far from the power of these
wicked men."
Again there was the struggle upon McMurdo's face, and again it set
like granite. "No harm shall come to you, Ettie--nor to your father
either. As to wicked men, I expect you may find that I am as bad as
the worst of them before we're through."
"No, no, Jack! I would trust you anywhere."
McMurdo laughed bitterly. "Good Lord! how little you know of me! Your
innocent soul, my darling, could not even guess what is passing in
mine. But, hullo, who's the visitor?"
The door had opened suddenly, and a young fellow came swaggering in
with the air of one who is the master. He was a handsome, dashing
young man of about the same age and build as McMurdo himself. Under
his broad-brimmed black felt hat, which he had not troubled to
remove, a handsome face with fierce, domineering eyes and a curved
hawk-bill of a nose looked savagely at the pair who sat by the stove.
Ettie had jumped to her feet full of confusion and alarm. "I'm glad
to see you, Mr. Baldwin," said she. "You're earlier than I had
thought. Come and sit down."
Baldwin stood with his hands on his hips looking at McMurdo. "Who is
this?" he asked curtly.
"It's a friend of mine, Mr. Baldwin, a new boarder here. Mr. McMurdo,
may I introduce you to Mr. Baldwin?"
The young men nodded in surly fashion to each other.
"Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?" said Baldwin.
"I didn't understand that there was any relation between you."
"Didn't you? Well, you can understand it now. You can take it from me
that this young lady is mine, and you'll find it a very fine evening
for a walk."
"Thank you, I am in no humour for a walk."
"Aren't you?" The man's savage eyes were blazing with anger. "Maybe
you are in a humour for a fight, Mr. Boarder!"
"That I am!" cried McMurdo, springing to his feet. "You never said a
