Men of action are not as a usual thing great talkers; so it is with the members of this committee. They waive much that would be deemed essential by less resolute and active men. How the several annihilations are to be effected is a matter left for each man to decide for himself. He will have to carry out any plan he devises, and it is considered as the best policy to let his method be known to no one else. This is the surest way of avoiding a possible miscarriage of the plan. The failure of one of the forty men will not then involve the remaining thirty-nine. Every contingency is weighed. The chance of one or more of the men going insane because of the frightful secret, is taken into account and the idea that each man shall decide the details of the course he is to pursue is adopted. "I am glad that we parted without formality," Nettinger declares to the group of committeemen who are his companions on a train that leaves Chicago for the South. "It would have unnerved us to speak of our meeting as '_the last_'" says another of the group. "I have faced danger in my life, but I regard this as the most astounding departure that has ever been made in the interests of humanity." "The future of the Republic is at stake," observes a third. "How will it all end?" This is the question that is uppermost in the minds of all. "There is no time left to weigh the effects of defeat," Nettinger asserts. "Each of us has but one thing to do, and to do this successfully he has pledged his life. No man can do more." The eleven disciples, as they separated after the crucifixion, each to pursue a separate course, inaugurated the preaching of a great and potential religion, and their work is the most momentous in history. So it may prove that this Nineteenth Century aggregation of men united for the purpose of benefiting their fellowmen, is of tantamount influence on the human race. From acting as component parts in a body that exists as a moral protest against the wrongs of the world and the unrelenting hands of the usurpers of the right of the people, these forty men go forth as an army of crusaders. On the committee of forty there is not a man who has not argued his conscience into a state of appreciation of the worthiness of the action he is to perform. It is past midnight. Two months from this date, on October thirteenth, the fulfillment of the vows the men have taken, must be made. In the sixty days that are to intervene will any of these intrepid wills bend under the pressure of mental anxiety? Will any of them prove a modern Judas? Nevins is the last to quit the store-room. He is nervous, almost hysterical; his thin classical features are distorted and tense, as though he were undergoing actual physical pain. And indeed to his sensitive nature, the events of the night are sufficient to unnerve his mind and body. He is to meet Carl Metz and Hendrick Stahl in the morning, to start for the East.