"Ah! there's the rub," he said. "But we won't jump before we get to the stile. One step at a time and await developments, say I. But come, we will join our friends. It will be a comfort to me to have one cool head in our number. We have no lack of madcaps." The long low chamber which we now entered was in darkness, save for the light of two small lanthorns, placed on a long narrow table that ran down the centre of the room. Forms ran round three sides of the room. At the head of the table was an arm chair of ancient oak. In the centre of the table, flanked on either side by lanthorns, which turned their lights each to the other, was a human skull. In the chair sat one whom I felt rather than saw to be my cousin George. By his right hand was a Bible; on his left, one who acted as secretary and kept a roll of members, a precious document I would afterwards have given all I was worth to lay my hands on. The forms around the wall were close packed by masked men, in working dress, who rose as Booth led me into the room and placed me at the foot of the table confronting the president. All rose as we slowly made our way to that place, Booth holding me by the hand. I was in a cold sweat, and wished myself a thousand miles away. Booth left me standing there peering straight at him I knew to be my cousin. "No. 20, I call upon you to explain to this candidate the principles of our order." "We are banded together," said a voice from the line of figures on my right, a voice I knew at once to be Booth's; for no other man I ever knew, scarce any woman, had a voice so gentle, so plaintive. "We are banded together to assert the rights of labour, to resist the encroachments and the cruelty of capital. We seek to succour the needy and to solace the sorrowing. We aim to educate the toilers to a sense of their just rights, to amend the political, the social, and the economic condition of those whose only wealth is their labour, whose only birth-right is to toil. Our methods are persuasion, argument, united representation of our claims, and if need be, the removal of those mechanic rivals of human effort by which callous and heartless employers are bent on supplanting the labour of our hands. But this only in the last resort, all other means exhausted, our righteous claims flouted, our fair demands denied." "Benjamin Bamforth," came my cousin's voice across the gloom. "You have heard the statement of our aims. Are you willing to ally yourself with us and to aid us in our cause? If so, answer 'I am.'" "I am." "We are witnesses of your solemn obligation. Who vouches for Benjamin Bamforth?" "That do I," said Booth. "That, too, do I," said another voice that sounded familiar to my ears. "Place before him the Book. Place your hands, Brother Bamforth, upon the Bible and fix your eyes upon these emblems of mortality. As they are, so be you, if you falter, or if you fail. Repeat after me the words of our oath."