The doors and windows creaked, the wind sighed through the corridors and chambers overhead, the rains beat on what glass remained in the casements. But what was that other sound? Surely it was of the footsteps of men. Peering through the window, Dick saw forms approaching through the shrubbery, from a small side gate in the garden wall. These were, doubtless, the last of a party whose foremost members were already in the corridor. The intruders came cautiously, but as if familiar with the place. Evidently some organized meeting was at hand in this empty house. Dick noticed the chairs and table anew. What were these men? A social club, a gang of thieves, or a band of conspirators? In any one of these cases Dick felt that he would be _de trop_. Manifestly the men were approaching the room in which he sat. They were already too near the door for him to escape unseen by the corridor. So he slipped into the wide, empty fireplace with which the room was provided, and whose rear was quite in shadow. A moment later three men entered the room. Each took from beneath his cloak a bundle wrapped in cloth, and laid it on the table, then sat down and waited. Other men arrived, almost immediately, and the number kept increasing at short intervals until perhaps fifteen were gathered. Their conversation so far had consisted of brief remarks about the weather. They now sat in an irregular semicircle, facing the table. The man who had first entered arose and opened the bundles. The gray light of the stormy afternoon disclosed the contents of these bundles as three swords and several pistols. "Messieurs," said the man who had risen,--an erect, powerful, handsome man of thirty,--"the hour is almost at hand. That all of us may participate in the intention, though but one of us may strike the blow, I am to describe fully the plan agreed upon by the Committee of Three. As each one of us is potentially the chosen arm of the Brotherhood in this honorable deed, it behooves each one to attend every detail as if he were, in fact, already the selected instrument." The men sat in perfect silence, their eyes fixed upon the speaker, every attitude being that of breathless attention.