CHAPTER I.

A first interview.

One chilly afternoon in February, while as yet the London season had not quite begun, though the streets were busy enough, an open barouche was being rapidly driven along Piccadilly in the direction of Coventry Street; and its two occupants, despite the dull roar of vehicles around them, seemed to be engaged in eager conversation.  One of these two was a tall, handsome, muscular-looking man of about thirty, with a sun-tanned face, piercing gray eyes, and a reddish-brown beard cropped in the foreign fashion; the other, half hidden among the voluminous furs of the carriage, was a pale, humpbacked lad, with a fine, expressive, intellectual face, and large, animated, almost woman-like eyes.  The former was George Brand, of Brand Beeches, Bucks, a bachelor unattached, and a person of no particular occupation, except that he had tumbled about the world a good deal, surveying mankind with more or less of interest or indifference.  His companion and friend, the bright-eyed, beautiful-faced, humpbacked lad, was Ernest Francis D’Agincourt, thirteenth Baron Evelyn.

The discussion was warm, though the elder of the two friends spoke deprecatingly, at times even scornfully.

“I know what is behind all that,” he said.  “They are making a dupe of you, Evelyn.  A parcel of miserable Leicester Square conspirators, plundering the working-man of all countries of his small savings, and humbugging him with promises of twopenny-halfpenny revolutions!  That is not the sort of thing for you to mix in.  It is not English, all that dagger and dark-lantern business, even if it were real; but when it is only theatrical—­when they are only stage daggers—­when the wretched creatures who mouth about assassination and revolution are only swaggering for half-pence—­bah!  What part do you propose to play?”

“I tell you it has nothing to do with daggers and dark lanterns,” said the other with even greater warmth.  “Why will you run your head against a windmill?  Why must you see farther into a mile-stone than anybody else?  I wonder, with all your travelling, you have not got rid of some of that detestable English prejudice and suspicion.  I tell you that when I am allowed, even as an outsider, to see something of this vast organization for the defence of the oppressed, for the protection of the weak, the vindication of the injured, in every country throughout the globe—­when I see the splendid possibilities before it—­when I find that even a useless fellow like myself may do some little thing to lessen the mighty mass of injustice and wrong in the world—­well, I am not going to stop to see that every one of my associates is of pure English birth, with a brother-in-law on the Bench, and an uncle in the House of Lords.  I am glad enough to have something to do that is worth doing; something to believe in; something to hope for.  You—­what do you believe in?  What is there in heaven or earth that you believe in?”