The really esoteric part of it, Amidon felt, was to come, as he could see no reason for making a secret of these very solemn and edifying matters. Stevens felt very much the same way about it, and was full of expectancy when informed that the next degree would test his obedience.

He highly resolved to obey to the letter.

The next act disclosed Stevens hoodwinked, and the room light. He was informed that he was in the Catacombs, familiar to the early Christians, and must make his way alone and in darkness, following the Clue of Faith which was placed in his hands. This Clue was a white cord similar to the sort used by masons (in the building-trades). He groped his way along by it to the station of the next officer, who warned him of the deadly consequences of disobedience. Thence he made his way onward, holding to the Clue of Faith--until he touched a trigger of some sort, which let down upon him an avalanche of tinware and such light and noisy articles, which frightened him so that he started to run, and was dexterously tripped by the Deacon Militant and a spearman, and caught in a net held by two others. A t.i.tter ran about the room.

"Obey," thundered the Vice-Pontiff, "and all will be well!"

Stevens resumed the Clue. At the station of the next officer to whom it brought him, the nature of faith was explained to him, and he was given the pa.s.sword, "Ichthus," whispered so that all in that part of the room could hear the interdicted syllables. But he was adjured never, never to utter it, unless to the Guardian of the Portal on entering the lodge, to the Deacon Militant on the opening thereof, or to a member, when he, Stevens, should become Sovereign Pontiff. Then he was faced toward the Vice-Pontiff, and told to answer loudly and distinctly the questions asked him.

"What is the lesson inculcated in this Degree?" asked the Vice-Pontiff from the other end of the room.

"Obedience!" shouted Stevens in reply.

"What is the pa.s.sword of this Degree?"

"Ichthus!" responded Stevens.

A roll of stage-thunder sounded deafeningly over his head. The piano was swept by a storm of ba.s.s pa.s.sion; and deep cries of "Treason!

Treason!" echoed from every side. Poor Stevens tottered, and fell into a chair placed by the Deacon Militant. He saw the enormity of the deed of shame he had committed. He had told the pa.s.sword!

"You have all heard this treason," said the Sovereign Pontiff, in the deepest of chest-tones--"a treason unknown in all the centuries of the past! What is the will of the conclave?"

"I would imprecate on the traitor's head," said a voice from one of the high-backed chairs, "the ancient doom of the Law!"

"Doom, doom!" said all in unison, holding the "oo" in a most blood-curdling way. "p.r.o.nounce doom!"

"One fate, and one alone," p.r.o.nounced the Sovereign Pontiff, "can be yours. Brethren, let him forthwith be encased in the Chest of the Clanking Chains, and hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, to be dashed in fragments at its stony base!"

Amidon's horror was modified by the evidences of repressed glee with which this sentence was received. Yet he felt a good deal of concern as they brought out a great chest, threw the struggling Stevens into it, slammed down the ponderous lid and locked it. Stevens kicked at the lid, but said nothing. The members leaped with joy. A great chain was brought and wrapped clankingly about the chest.

"Let me out," now yelled the Christian Martyr. "Let me out, d.a.m.n you!"

"Doom, do-o-o-oom!" roared the voices; and said the Sovereign Pontiff in impressive tones, "Proceed with the execution!"

Now the chest was slung up to a hook in the ceiling, and gradually drawn back by a pulley until it was far above the heads of the men, the chains meanwhile clanking continually against the receptacle, from which came forth a stream of smothered profanity.

"Hurl him down to the traitor's death!" shouted the Sovereign Pontiff.

The chest was loosed, and swung like a pendulum lengthwise of the room, down almost to the floor and up nearly to the ceiling. The profanity now turned into a yell of terror. The Martyrs slapped one another's backs and grew blue in the face with laughter. At a signal, a light box was placed where the chest would crush it (which it did with a sound like a small railway collision); the chest was stopped and the lid raised.

"Let the body receive Christian burial," said the Sovereign Pontiff.

"Our vengeance ceases with death."

This truly Christian sentiment was received with universal approval.

Death seemed to all a good place at which to stop.

"Brethren," said the Deacon Militant, as he struggled with the resurgent Stevens, "there seems some life here! Methinks the heart beats, and----"

The remainder of the pa.s.sage from the ritual was lost to Amidon by reason of the fact that Stevens had placed one foot against the Deacon's stomach and hurled that august officer violently to the floor.

"Let every test of life be applied," said the Sovereign Pontiff.

"Perchance some higher will than ours decrees his preservation. Take the body hence for a time; if possible, restore him to life, and we will consider his fate."

The recess which followed was clearly necessary to afford an opportunity for the calming of the risibilities of the Martyrs. The stage, too, had to be reset. Amidon's ethnological studies had not equaled his reading in _belles-lettres_, and he was unable to see the deep significance of these rites from an historical standpoint, and that here was a survival of those orgies to which our painted and skin-clad ancestors devoted themselves in spasms of religious frenzy, gazed at by the cave-bear and the mammoth. The uninstructed Amidon regarded them as inconceivable horse-play. While thus he mused, Stevens, who was still hoodwinked and being greatly belectured on the virtue of Faith and the duty of Obedience, reentered on his ordeal.

He was now informed by the officer at the other end of the room, that every man must ascend into the Mountains of Temptation and be tested, before he could be p.r.o.nounced fit for companionship with Martyrs.

Therefore, a weary climb heavenward was before him, and a great trial of his fidelity. On his patience, daring and fort.i.tude depended all his future in the Order. He was marched to a ladder and bidden to ascend.

"I," said the Deacon Militant, "upon this companion stair will accompany you."

But there was no other ladder and the Deacon Militant had to stand upon a chair.

Up the ladder labored Stevens, but, though he climbed manfully, he remained less than a foot above the floor. The ladder went down like a treadmill, as Stevens climbed--it was an endless ladder rolled down on Stevens' side and up on the other. The Deacon Militant, from his perch on the chair, encouraged Stevens to climb faster so as not to be out-stripped. With labored breath and straining muscles he climbed, the Martyrs rolling on the floor in merriment all the more violent because silent. Amidon himself laughed to see this strenuous climb, so strikingly like human endeavor, which puts the climber out of breath, and raises him not a whit--except in temperature. At the end of perhaps five minutes, when Stevens might well have believed himself a hundred feet above the roof, he had achieved a dizzy height of perhaps six feet, on the summit of a stage-property mountain, where he stood beside the Deacon Militant, his view of the surrounding plain cut off by papier-mache clouds, and facing a foul fiend to whom the Deacon Militant confided that here was a candidate to be tested and qualified.

Whereupon the foul fiend remarked "Ha, ha!" and bade them bind him to the Plutonian Thunderbolt and hurl him down to the nether world. The thunderbolt was a sort of toboggan on rollers, for which there was a slide running down presumably to the nether world, above mentioned.

The hoodwink was removed, and Stevens looked about him, treading warily, like one on the top of a tower; the great height of the mountain made him giddy. Obediently he lay face downward on the thunderbolt, and yielded up his wrists and ankles to fastenings provided for them.

"They're not going to lower him with those cords, are they?"

It was a stage-whisper from the darkness which spake thus.

"Oh, I guess it's safe enough!" said another, in the same sort of agitated whisper.

"Safe!" was the reply. "I tell you, it's sure to break! Some one stop 'em----"

To the heart of the martyred Stevens these words struck panic. But as he opened his mouth to protest, the catastrophe occurred. There was a snap, and the toboggan shot downward. Bound as he was, the victim could see below him a brick wall right across the path of his descent.

He was helpless to move; it was useless to cry out. For all that, as he felt in imagination the crushing shock of his head driven like a battering-ram against this wall, he uttered a roar such as from Achilles might have roused armed nations to battle. And even as he did so, his head touched the wall, there was a crash, and Stevens lay safe on a mattress after his ten-foot slide, surrounded by fragments of red-and-white paper which had lately been a wall. He was pale and agitated, and generally done for; but tremendously relieved when he had a.s.sured himself of the integrity of his cranium. This he did by repeatedly feeling of his head, and looking at his fingers for sanguinary results. As Amidon looked at him, he repented of what he had done to this thoroughly maltreated fellow man. After the Catacombs scene, which was supposed to be impressive, and some more of the "secret" work, everybody crowded about Stevens, now invested with the collar and "jewel" of Martyrhood, and laughed, and congratulated him as on some great achievement, while he looked half-pleased and half-bored.

Amidon with the rest greeted him, and told him that after his vacation was over, he hoped to see him back at the office.

"That was a fine exemplification of the principles of the Order," said Alvord as they went home.

"What was?" asked Amidon.

"Hiring old Stevens back," answered Alvord. "You've got to live your principles, or they don't amount to much."

"Suppose some fellow should get into a lodge," asked Amidon, "who had never been initiated?"

"Well," said Alvord, "there isn't much chance of that. I shouldn't dare to say. You can't tell what the fellows would do when such sacred things were profaned, you know. You couldn't tell what they might do!"

XIV

THE TREASON OF ISEGRIM THE WOLF

Then up and spake Reynard, the Fox, King Leo's throne before: "My clients, haled before you, Sire, deserve not frown nor roar!

These flocks and herds and sties, dread lord, should thanks give for our care-- The care of Isegrim the Wolf, and Bruin strong, the Bear!

Its usefulness, its innocence, our Syndicate protests.

We crave the Court's support for our legitimate interests!"