“Come, Comrade!” she exclaimed.  “If you delay much longer, everything will be stone cold, and then beg forgiveness if you dare!”

Gabriel laughed.

“Your own fault, if you wait for me,” he answered, seating himself.  “You know how it is when you get to scribbling—­you never know when to stop.  And the scenery, up here, won’t let you go.  Positively fascinating, that view is!  If the Plutes knew of it, they’d put a summer resort here, and coin millions!”

“Yes,” answered Craig, once Congressman Craig, but now hiding from the Air Trust spies.  “And what’s more, they’d mighty soon confiscate this resting-up place of the Comrades, and have us back behind bars, or worse.  But they don’t know about it, and aren’t likely to.  Thank Heaven for at least one place the Party can maintain as an asylum for our people when too hard-pressed!  Not a road within ten miles of here.  No way to reach this place, masked here in the cliffs and mountains, except by aeroplane.  Not one chance in a thousand, fellows, that they’ll ever find it.  Confusion take them all!”

The meal progressed, with plenty of serious and earnest discussion of the pressing problems now close at hand.  Brevard, a short, spare man, editor of the recently-suppressed “San Francisco Revolutionist” and now in hiding, made a few trenchant remarks, from time to time.  Grantham and his wife, both active speakers on the “Underground Circuit” and both under sentence of long imprisonment, said little.  Most of the conversation was between Catherine, Craig and Gabriel.  Long before the supper was done, lamps had to be brought and curtains lowered.  At last the meal was over.

“Dessert, now, Gabriel!” exclaimed Grantham.  “Your turn!”

“Eh?  What?” asked Armstrong.  “My turn for what?”

“Your turn to do your part!  Don’t think that you’re going to write a poem and then put it in your pocket, that way.  Come, out with it!”

Gabriel’s protests availed nothing.  The others overbore him.  And at last, unwillingly, he drew out the manuscript and spread it open on his knee.

“You really want to hear this?” he demanded.  “If you can possibly spare me, I wish you would!”

For all answer, Craig pushed a lamp over toward him.  The warm light on Gabriel’s face, now slightly bearded, and on his strong, corded throat, made a striking picture as he cast his eyes on the manuscript and in vibrant and harmonious voice, read: 

    I SAW THE SOCIALIST

    I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men,
    Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude;
    I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters,
    Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People,
    Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare
        foods,
    Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty!