itan newspaper man,
seemed as though stricken into stone, stripped of all assurance, all
complacence, awed, tense, palpitant, as the patched, bare-legged
tatterdemalion of ten from the fields, that stood beside them, was awed
and tense and palpitant.

And away on either side stretched the line of white, rigid faces, the
never-ending, burning eyes--but the silence with that shriek was gone
now, for another woman and another, overwrought, needing but that sudden
shock to unnerve them utterly, shrieked in turn--and through the line
seemed to run a shudder, and it moved a little though no foot stirred,
moved with a strange, sinuous, rocking, swaying movement, from the hips,
backward and forward and to either side. Men raised their eyes, stole
frightened, questioning glances at their neighbors--and fixed their eyes
on the Flopper again--on the Flopper and that majestic figure in the
center of the lawn, so calm of mien, of attitude and pose.

Once again the Flopper's eyes swept the scene. A few feet in advance of
the crowd, as though drawn irresistibly forward, young Holmes hung upon
his crutch. The boy's soul seemed in his face--hope, a world of it, as
he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper;
his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional
excitement. Still once again the Flopper's eyes swept the line of men
and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable
hysteria--and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken
movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous
supplication, and, jerking himself forward, went on.

Slowly, very slowly at first, he resumed his way, crawling it seemed by
no more than a painful inch on inch, in mortal pain, in mortal agony and
struggle--then gradually his movements began to quicken, as though
growing upon him were a mad, elated haste that he could not
control--quicker and quicker he went, pitching and lurching wildly; from
a pace that was beyond him.

A strange, low, moaning sound rose from behind him, fluttering,
inarticulate, that voiceless utterance that seeks to find some vent for
human emotion when human emotion sweeps with mighty surge to engulf the
soul. It rose and died away and rose again--and died away--and children
began to whimper with a fear and terror that they did not understand,
and seeking solace in their elders' faces found added cause for fear
instead.

Nearer to that saintly figure