“Here’s the hang-out.” Brissenden rested his demijohn at the upstairs entrance, preliminary to the climb. It was the usual two-story corner building, with a saloon and grocery underneath. “The gang lives here — got the whole upstairs to themselves. But Kreis is the only one who has two rooms. Come on.”

No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded the utter blackness like a familiar ghost. He stopped to speak to Martin.

“There’s one fellow — Stevens — a theosophist. Makes a pretty tangle when he gets going. Just now he’s dish-washer in a restaurant. Likes a good cigar. I’ve seen him eat in a ten-cent hash-house and pay fifty cents for the cigar he smoked afterward. I’ve got a couple in my pocket for him, if he shows up.”

“And there’s another fellow — Parry — an Australian, a statistician and a sporting encyclopaedia. Ask him the grain output of Paraguay for 1903, or the English importation of sheetings into China for 1890, or at what weight Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or who was welter-weight champion of the United States in ‘68, and you’ll get the correct answer with the automatic celerity of a slot-machine. And there’s Andy, a stone-mason, has ideas on everything, a good chess-player; and another fellow, Harry, a baker, red hot socialist and strong union man. By the way, you remember Cooks’ and Waiters’ strike — Hamilton was the chap who organized that union and precipitated the strike — planned it all out in advance, right here in Kreis’s rooms. Did it just for the fun of it, but was too lazy to stay by the union. Yet he could have risen high if he wanted to. There’s no end to the possibilities in that man — if he weren’t so insuperably lazy.”

Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of light marked the threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing black eyes. Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the little back room that served for kitchen and dining room. The front room served as bedchamber and living room. Overhead was the week’s washing, hanging in festoons so low that Martin did not see at first the two men talking in a corner. They hailed Brissenden and his demijohns with acclamation, and, on being introduced, Martin learned they were Andy and Parry. He joined them and listened attentively to the description of a prize-fight Parry had seen the night before; while Brissenden, in his glory, plunged into the manufacture of a toddy and the serving of wine and whiskey- and-sodas. At his command, “Bring in the clan,” Andy departed to go the round of the rooms for the lodgers.

“We’re lucky that most of them are here,” Brissenden whispered to Martin. “There’s Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them. Stevens isn’t around, I hear. I’m going to get them started on monism if I can. Wait till they get a few jolts in them and they’ll warm up.”

At first the conversation was desultory. Nevertheless Martin could not fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds. They were men with opinions, though the opinions often clashed, and, though they were witty and clever, they were not superficial. He swiftly saw, no matter upon what they talked, that each man applied the correlation of knowledge and had also a deep-seated and unified conception of society and the Cosmos. Nobody manufactured their opinions for them; they were all rebels of one variety or another, and their lips were strangers to platitudes. Never had Martin, at the Morses’, heard so amazing a range of topics discussed. There seemed no limit save time to the things they were alive to. The talk wandered from Mrs. Humphry Ward’s new book to Shaw’s latest play, through the future of the drama to reminiscences of Mansfield. They appreciated or sneered at the morning editorials, jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand to Henry James and Brander Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far East and the economic aspect of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over the German elections and Bebel’s last speech, and settled down to local politics, the latest plans and scandals in the union labor party administration, and the wires that were pulled to bring about the Coast Seamen’s strike. Martin was struck by the inside knowledge they possessed. They knew what was never printed in the newspapers — the wires and strings and the hidden hands that made the puppets dance. To Martin’s surprise, the girl, Mary, joined in the conversation, displaying an intelligence he had never encountered in the few