“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, and renewed the appeal he had been making for nearly five minutes.

“Ain’t no one goin’ to drive me out to de Patriarch’s?”

“Horses are all busy in the fields,” said a voice, uncompromisingly.

“Yes,” said the Flopper, with bitter irony, “drivin’ each other around, while youse are here starin’ at me an’ won’t help.”

His eyes caught Doc Madison’s from the veranda and held an instant to read a message and interpret the almost imperceptible, but significant, movement of Madison’s head.

“Gee!” said the Flopper to himself, as his eyes swept the faces around him again.  “Dis is a nice game de Doc’s planted on me—­he wants me to do de wiggle out dere fer de rubes!  Ain’t dey a peachy lot—­look at de saucer eyes on de kids!”

Mrs. Thornton, in her wheel-chair on the inner edge of the circle, turned to her husband.