' eyes--and into the eyes of the
selectmen, the overseers of the poor, the general-store proprietor, and
the school committee.

"Don't drive him over, then," he said significantly. "Don't any of the
rest of you do it either--and tell everybody else not to. Make him
_crawl_. If he's determined to go, let him get there by himself if he
can, make him crawl--he'll never be able to do it."

"That's so," said Mr. Higgins, brightening, while the others nodded;
then, dubiously: "But s'pose he _does_ get there--how be we goin' to
stop him?"

"If he can get there by himself you can't stop him," said Madison
seriously. "You can't do anything like that. To use force would be
carrying things too far, and would only place the Patriarch in a worse
light. If this fellow--what's his name?--Coogan?--can crawl there, let
him--that's his own business. None of _us_ are encouraging him, the
Patriarch didn't ask him to come, and no one has a right to expect
miracles--so it can't hurt the Patriarch seriously under those
conditions. Besides, if this Coogan has got faith enough to crawl that
mile, who knows what might happen--make him crawl."

Mr. Higgins, with a grim nod, headed a determined exodus from the hotel
office--and Madison strolled out onto the veranda.

Needley was in a furor. The news spread like an oil-fed conflagration.
The farmers left their work in the fields and hurried into the village;
from the houses and cottages came the women and children to cluster
around the Congress Hotel; from the station, scarcely of less interest
to the inhabitants than the Flopper himself, straggled in those curious
enough to have left the train, nearly a dozen of them--and amongst them
Pale Face Harry coughed, as he trudged laboriously along.

Larger and larger grew the circle around the Flopper, filling and
blocking the road, overflowing into front yards, and massing on the
little lawn of the hotel clear up to the veranda--until fields and
houses were deserted, and to the last inhabitant Needley was there.

Upon the ground squatted the Flopper, his eyes sweeping the ring of
faces that was like a wall around him--the grinning faces of his fellow
passengers from the train; the stony, concerned and rather sullen faces
of the men of Needley; the anxious, excited faces of the women; the
bewildered, curious and somewhat frightened faces of the children, who
pushed and shoved their elders for better vantage ground.

The Flopper licked his lips,