Things had developed extraordinarily during the last century.

First there had been the organised assault upon the Church in France; and what Catholics had always suspected then became a certainty in the revelations of 1918, when P.Gerome, the Dominican and ex-Mason, had made his disclosures with regard to the Mark-Masons.

It had become evident then that Catholics had been right, and that Masonry, in its higher grades at least, had been responsible throughout the world for the strange movement against religion.

But he had died in his bed, and the public had been impressed by that fact.
Then came the splendid donations in France and Italy--to hospitals, orphanages, and the like; and once more suspicion began to disappear.
After all, it seemed--and continued to seem--for seventy years and more that Masonry was nothing more than a vast philanthropical society.

Now once more men had their doubts.
"I hear that Felsenburgh is a Mason," observed Monsignor Macintosh, the Cathedral Administrator.