Each man would ridicule heartily a neighbour who should allege such a ground for fearing to injure one of us; but there is none who is so true to his own unbelief as to do that which, in every instance, has been followed by signal and awful disaster.

Moreover, we do by visible symbols suggest a relation between the vengeance and the crime.

Over the heart of criminals who have paid with their lives, no matter by what immediate agency, for wrong to us, is found after death the image of a small blood-red star; the only case in which any of our sacred symbols are exposed to profane eyes." "Surely," I said, "in the course of generations, and with your numbers, you must be often watched and traced; and some one spy, on one out of a million occasions, must have found access to your meetings and heard and seen all that passed." "Our meetings," he said, "are held where no human eye can possibly see, no human ear hear what passes.

The Chambers meet in apartments concealed within the dwellings of individual members.

When we meet the doors are guarded, and can be passed only by those who give a token and a password.