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 metropolitan 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.