“Vell, I vant to tell you right now that it ain’t no manner of use. There’s someone slipped in afore you.”

“She told me so.”

“Vell, you can lay that she told you truth. But did she tell you who it vas?”

“No, I asked her; but she wouldn’t tell.”

“I dare say not, the leetle baggage! Perhaps she did not vish to frighten you avay.”

“Frighten!” McMurdo was on fire in a moment.

“Ah, yes, my friend! You need not be ashamed to be frightened of him. It is Teddy Baldwin.”

“And who the devil is he?”

“He is a boss of Scowrers.”

“Scowrers! I’ve heard of them before. It’s Scowrers here and Scowrers there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid of? Who are the Scowrers?”

The boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as everyone did who talked about that terrible society. “The Scowrers,” said he, “are the Eminent Order of Freemen!”

The young man stared. “Why, I am a member of that order myself.”

“You! I vould never have had you in my house if I had known it—not if you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a veek.”

“What’s wrong with the order? It’s for charity and good fellowship. The rules say so.”

“Maybe in some places. Not here!”

“What is it here?”

“It’s a murder society, that’s vat it is.”

McMurdo laughed incredulously. “How can you prove that?” he asked.

“Prove it! Are there not fifty murders to prove it? Vat about Milman and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson family, and old Mr. Hyam, and little Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is there a man or a voman in this valley vat does not know it?”

“See here!” said McMurdo earnestly. “I want you to take back what you’ve said, or else make it good. One or the other you must do before I quit this room. Put yourself in my place. Here am I, a stranger in the town. I belong to a society that I know only as an innocent one. You’ll find it through the length and breadth of the States, but always as an innocent one. Now, when I am counting upon joining it here, you tell me that it is the same as a murder society called the Scowrers. I guess you owe me either an apology or else an explanation, Mr. Shafter.”

“I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The bosses of the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the one, it is the other vat vill strike you. We have proved it too often.”

“That’s just gossip—I want proof!” said McMurdo.