I HASTENED at once home, and knocked at Miss Calhoun’s door. While waiting for a response, the mockery of my return without the token I had undertaken to restore to her, impressed itself upon me in full force. It seemed to me that in that instant my face must have taken on a haggard look. I could not summon up the necessary will to make it otherwise. Any effort in that direction would have made my failure at cheerfulness pitiable.  
The door opened. There she stood. Whatever expectancy¹ of success she may have had fled at once. Our eyes met and her countenance² changed. My face must have told the whole story, for she exclaimed:
 
“You have failed!”
 
I was obliged to acknowledge it in a whisper, but hastened to assure her that the ring had not yet been placed upon the bronze hand, and was not likely to be till the lock had been cleaned, out. This interested her, and called out a hurried but complete recital³ of my adventure. She hung upon it breathlessly, and when I reached the point where Madame and her prophetic voice entered the tale, she showed so much excitement that any doubts I may have cherished as to the importance of the communication Madame had made us vanished in a cold horror I with difficulty hid from my companion. But the end agitated⁴ her more than the beginning, and when she heard that I had taken upon myself a direct connection with this mysterious matter, she grew so pale that I felt forced to inquire if the folly⁵ I had committed was likely to result badly, at which she shuddered⁶ and replied:
 
“You have brought death upon yourself. I see nothing but destruction before us both. This woman—this horrible woman—has seen your face, and, if she is what you describe, she will never forget it. The man, who is her guardian⁷ or agent, no doubt, must have tracked you, and finding you here with me, from whose hand he himself may have torn the ring last night, will record it as treason against a cause which punishes all treason with death.
 
“Pshaw!” I ejaculated, with a jocular effort at indifference⁸, which I acknowledge I did not feel. “You seem to forget the law. We live in the city of Baltimore. Charlatans⁹ such as I have just left behind me do not make away with good citizens with impunity¹⁰. We have only to seek the protection of the police.”
 
She met my looks with a slowly increasing intentness, which stilled this protest on my lips.
 
“I am under no oath,” she ruminated¹¹. “I can tell this man what I will. Mr. Abbott, there has been formed in this city an organization against which the police are powerless. I am an involuntary member of it, and I know its power. It has constrained¹² me and it has constrained others, and no one who has opposed it once has lived to do so twice. Yet it has no recognized head (though there is a chief to whom we may address ourselves), and it has no oaths of secrecy¹³. All is left to the discretion¹⁴ of its members, and to their fears. The object of this society is the breaking of the power of the North, and the means by which it works is death. I joined it under a stress of feeling I called patriotism¹⁵, and I believed myself right till the sword was directed against my own breast. Then I quailed¹⁶; then I began to ask by what right we poor mortals constitute ourselves into instruments of destruction to our kind, and having once stopped to question, I saw the whole matter in such a different light that I knowingly put a stumbling-block in the path of so-called avenging¹⁷ justice, and thus courted the doom¹⁸ that at any moment may fall upon my head.” And she actually looked up, as if expecting to see it fall then and there. “This Madame,” she went on in breathless haste, “is doubtless one of the members. How so grotesque¹⁹ and yet redoubtable²⁰ an individuality should have become identified with a cause demanding the coolest judgment²¹ as well as the most acute political acumen²², I cannot stop to conjecture²³. But that she is a member of our organization, and an important one, too, her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient proof, even had you not seen my ring on her finger. Perhaps, incredible as it may appear, she is the chief. If so—But I do not make myself intelligible,” she continued, meeting my eyes. “I will be more explicit²⁴. One peculiar²⁵ feature of this organization is the complete ignorance which we all have concerning our fellow-members. We can reveal nothing, for we know nothing. I know that I am allied²⁶ to a cause which has for its end the destruction of all who oppose the supremacy²⁷ of the South, but I cannot give you the name of another person attached to this organization, though I feel the pressure of their combined power upon every act of my life. You may be a member without my knowing it—a secret and fearful thought, which forms one of the greatest safeguards to the institution, though it has failed in this instance, owing”—here her voice fell—“to my devotion to the man I love. What?”—(I had not spoken; my heart was dying within me, but I had given no evidence of a wish to interrupt her; she, however, feared a check, and rushed vehemently²⁸ on.) “I shall have to tell you more. When, through pamphlets and unsigned letters—dangerous communications, which have long since become ashes—I was drawn²⁹ into this society (and only those of the most radical³⁰ and impressionable natures are approached) a ring and a key were sent me with this injunction: ‘When the man or woman whose name will be forwarded to you in an otherwise empty envelope, shall have, in your honest judgment, proved himself or herself sufficiently³¹ dangerous to the cause we love, to merit removal, you are to place this ring on the middle finger of the bronze hand locked up in the box openly displayed in the office of a Dr. Merriam on ——— Street. With the pressure of the whole five rings on the fingers of this piece of mechanism³², the guardian of our rights will be notified by a bell, that a victim awaits justice, and the end to be accomplished³³ will be begun. As there are five fingers, and each one of these must feel the pressure of its own ring before connection can be made between this hand and the bell mentioned, no injustice³⁴ can be do............