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And Storch, for the most part silent, would sit with folded arms, puffing at his pipe, a suggestion of genial malice on his face, throwing out a phrase here and there that set the pack about him leaping like hungry dogs to the lure of food.

At a black hour, before the first greenish glow was quickening the east, he tiptoed and stood gazing down at Storch. He had never seen a face more placid and untroubled. He felt that any man must have an extraordinary sense of self-righteousness to yield so completely to serenity in the face of deliberate crime. But Storch was of the stuff of which all fanatics were made.

"Well, I'll risk it... I know well enough you're not a man easily won to an abstract hatred... But a personal hatred very often serves as good a turn... Everything is grist to my mill." "A personal hatred?" echoed Fred. Storch blew out the light. "You're duller than I thought," he called through the gloom. Fred turned his face away and tried to sleep.

Fred snapped, suddenly. "Including the bomb," Storch repeated, malevolently, caressing the phrase with a note of rare affection. "It is the most skillful arrangement I have seen in a long time ... in a kodak case. By the way ... are you accurate at heaving things?... You are to stand upon the roof of a row of one-story stores quite near the entrance and promptly at the precise minute "

He felt like a man invested with all the horrid solemnity of the death watch. That night Storch confirmed Fred's intuitions. He said, pausing a moment over gulping his inevitable bread and cheese: "I have planned everything for Saturday." Fred cut himself a slice of bread. "So I understand," he said, coldly. "Who told you?" "Your companions are great gossips ... and I have ears."

Hilmer been plotting this together?" Storch's eyes widened in surprise. "You're getting keener every moment... Well, you've asked a fair question. I planted that maid in the house soon after I knew the story." "After the fever set me to prattling?" "Precisely." Fred Starratt stood motionless for a moment, but presently he began to laugh. Storch looked annoyed, then rather puzzled.

He must leave Storch and his motley brood as soon as possible; somehow the acid of their ruthless philosophy was eating away the remnants of any inner beauty which had been left him. At first he had been all revolt, but now there were swift moments in which he asked himself what quarrel he could have with any blows struck at authority. What had established order done for him?

He spat contemptuously and began to cram a blackened pipe to overflowing. The boat had landed and already the crowd was moving up the apron. Fred and his companion felt themselves urged forward by the pressure of this human tide. "Come and have some coffee with me," Fred heard the man at his side say in a half-commanding tone. "My name is Storch. What shall I call you?" "Anything you like!"

She continued to stand, immobile, wrapped in the sinister patience of her calling. Fred could not take his eyes from her. "She's waiting for you," Storch said. Fred smiled wanly. "Do you want to go? ... If you do I'll wait here!" Fred tried to conceal his conflicting emotions. He did not want to betray his surprise at Storch's sudden and irrational indiscretion.

These were Nicholas Storch, a weaver, Mark Stubner, a former student at Wittenberg, and another weaver, who were now zealously joined by the theologian Martin Cellarius. They boasted of a direct revelation from God, of prophetic visions, dreams, and familiar conversations with the Deity. Compared with these pretensions, Scripture was a thing of small importance in their eyes.