s
men and women watched. Out toward the Patriarch, alone now, the Flopper
began to wriggle and writhe his way along. God in Heaven have pity! What
was this sight they looked upon--this poor, distorted, mangled thing
that grovelled in the earth--that figure towering there in the sunlight
with venerable white beard and hair, erect, symbolic of some strange,
mystic power that awed them, his head turned slightly in a curious
listening attitude, the sightless eyes closed, upon the face a great
calm like a solemn benediction.

Fell a stillness that was as the stillness of death; came a hush until
in men's ears was the quick, fierce pound and throb of their own hearts.
On, on toward the Patriarch slithered and twisted that frightful
deformity that they had followed over that long, torturing mile--on, on
he went, and they watched scarce drawing breath, their faces white,
their very limbs held as in a palsied, fearsome spell--and then, sudden,
abrupt, terrifying, there rose a shriek, wild, hysterical, prolonged, in
a woman's voice, the cadence wavering from guttural to shrill and ending
in a high-pitched, broken scream.

The Flopper halted and turned himself about, while his left hand swept
his livid face, brushing from it the spurting drops, sweeping back the
damp, tangled hair from his eyes--faced them till they saw an agony on
human countenance that struck, stabbing, to their souls--faced them
while his eyes traversed the long, long line of ghastly white faces
before him, out of which eyes everywhere, row on row of them, straining,
fixed, fascinated, seemed to burn like living fires as they held him in
their focus.

He had not gone far, perhaps ten yards--no more. By the group around the
wheel-chair, almost in the center of the line, stood Madison, his chin
in his hand in a meditative, thoughtful attitude, the single soul who
watched the scene from under lowered lids; Thornton had involuntarily
edged a little forward from behind the chair until he stood now at its
side in a strange, abashed way as though his own personality were
over-ruled, obliterated, his face with a white sternness upon it, his
eyes, like all other eyes, agleam with an unnatural fire; Mrs. Thornton
had pulled herself forward in the chair, one hand clutching at her
breast, the frail fingers of the other woven in a grasp so tight around
the arm of the chair that the flesh was bloodless; a little way off, a
group of three, the two salesmen and the metropol