It does not matter who is the writer of the following pages. If it did, no inducement likely to be offered, would tempt him to publish his name. He has no desire to be tracked out by the Brothers of the Southern Cross, and he knows too much of their deathless hatred and hound-like pertinacity, their numbers, and the ramifications of their organization, already encroaching on southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, to carelessly take the slightest risk of anything of the kind.

It is due to the public, however, that one who pretends to make an exposure like this, in which the whole nation is interested, should offer some plausible explanation of the means by which he became possessed of the information. For this explanation the reader is referred to the narrative following.

As to the truthfulness of the exposure, the writer is content to leave its vindication to the events of the future, confident that so far as the workings of the K. K. K. are ever discovered, they will confirm the main facts as given here. Of course there are many minor points on which it is not likely there will ever be more positive testimony than that here given. This must be so from the nature of the case, as will plainly appear in the following pages.