"We understand," the Son beside O'Hara said. "Stephen Bryce, the Father--" "Who calls himself the Father!" "--who calls himself the Father, has loosed the Deluge on Emporia. And will loose it on us." "Unless we destroy him first." "Unless we destroy him first," echoed the Son. And the others said, as if it were a litany, "Unless we destroy him first." "We are not free until Stephen Bryce is dead," said Anstruther. The chorus answered gravely, "We are not free until Stephen Bryce is dead." "We are prepared to die--" "We are prepared to die--" "To free those who come after us." "To free those who come after us," the Sons repeated. Anstruther clapped his hands. Instantly, in unison, the Sons sank down where they had stood and lay upon the floor, resting their faces torpidly upon their heavy arms, and instantly they were asleep, some forty of them lying in a grotesque ragged row with Anstruther still standing in their midst, though silent now, his blue eyes peering down at O'Hara upon the bunk. "They are like newborn infants," he said finally, a strange tenderness in his voice. "They drop to sleep at once, O'Hara, forgetting the danger of their future, oblivious of the horror of their past, slipping down into the sweet senselessness that their exhaustion craves. Do you know how long we worked to reach this corridor?" O'Hara said, "They don't know what danger is. But you do, Anstruther." "Six days and six nights without stopping to rest, if time down here were measurable," Anstruther continued raptly. "Working all that time, searching endlessly, sure that at last they were nearing Stephen Bryce, yet when again they realized that once more I had failed them, they sank down to sleep as you saw them do, trusting me, O'Hara, to lead them past this failure finally to triumph." "Anstruther, you're mad." The pale eyes closed. "Is it mad to work against the worst tyranny the earth has ever known? Then I am mad." "But you can't win, Anstruther. You can't beat the Father. If he wished it, he could loose upon you at this instant the Deluge that he turned into Emporia. And these poor, stupid and deluded Sons would never awaken from their torpor." "It is not the loss of his Sons that stays him, O'Hara." "Nor would it be you or I, were we to endanger him. He is watching you now, he hears what you are saying, and if he believed--" "I know all this, O'Hara," said Anstruther wearily, and sat down upon the cushioned bunk, now cupping his zealot's face within his soft, small hands. "I know Stephen Bryce and his power. Yes, he'd destroy me instantly if he believed that I endangered him. But he does not think that I do. His faith in himself is quite as absolute as my abhorrence of what he has done to these people. Look at them, O'Hara--they're men! Or they were men, their fathers were men, before Stephen Bryce stamped out their souls. And they can be men again." "If you continue to lead them?"