“I must admit, Major, that you inspire me with a sense of security such as I have not before experienced to-day. The Barley Hullers are out en masse. They are the protection to which you refer, I presume. What we all fear is a riot. The cowboys, as you know, are veritable devils when they get into a row, and one of them can usually whip half a dozen farmers in a rough-and-tumble shooting scrape.” The major threw back his clustering iron-gray hair, and, with a smile, said: “Stanton, I have learned to love you, and therefore have concluded to tell you what no man living in America knows to-day.” He paused a moment, and lighted his cigar. “Well?” said Hugh, as if impatiently asking a question. “They cannot harm me,” said he, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the howling mob, whose angry mutterings could be plainly heard. “But I will tell you what may happen.” He spoke slowly and seemed to Hugh to change for the moment from the Major Hampton he had admired so much into a patriarch with gullied furrows on his brow. Hugh concluded that his light remarks of a few moments before had been assumed, and intended simply to cover the deep emotion that he really felt. “Captain Osborn will make a speech,” the major continued, “and it will be an impassioned one, seasoned with the eloquence of rare power, inspired by his deep love of justice as well as of myself. The crowd will gradually disperse and wander across the bleak prairies to their miserable homes, furnished principally with poverty and hunger and deferred hopes. The Vigilantes, composed of cattlemen, will come back after midnight and probably select by ballot three of their number to kill me. I will be taken away from here, and will accompany the committee over into Dead Man’s Hollow, where already a grave is being dug and a rough board coffin prepared. The sheriff will be bought with the promise of reelection; he will discharge his deputies and turn me over to these would-be murderers.” Hugh could hardly restrain himself while the major was thus slowly counting the steps leading up to his death. “But, Major, don’t you think—” he began. “I will tell you—not what I think, but what I know.” His voice sank almost to a whisper as he continued. “They cannot hurt me, my boy; no, they cannot kill me, for I am a Rosicrucian and my talisman is the supposedly lost philosopher’s stone. This rare and precious chemical element was crystallized about the middle of the seventeenth century, after almost fifty years of exhaustive research and scientific investigation by my brothers of the Rosy Cross. The philosopher’s stone, however, is but one of the many secrets known to our order. Our home is in the Himalayas, in unknown vaults and caves, far above the Thibetan table-lands.