Women clutched at their breasts now; men’s knuckles went white beneath the tight-drawn skin; the children drew behind their mothers’ skirts and, terror-stricken, cried aloud.  Surcharged, on the edge, the bare and ragged edge of frenzy now was every man and woman in the crowd.  It was a sight, a spectacle that racked them in every fibre of their beings, that stirred them to pity, to hope, to fear, until the awful misery of this blighted and crawling thing was their own in its every twitch of agony—­that struck them with a terror, the greater because it was indefinable, a prescience, a reaching out beyond human realm, the invoking of a supernal power—­the thought of which very power, once loosed, chilled them with panic-dread.

Yet still they watched—­it was beyond their power to turn their eyes—­enthralled, a moaning, swaying, rocking mob, they watched.  Madness was creeping upon them rampant.  Like a mighty tide, the ocean weight behind it, hurling itself against flood-gates that could never stand, it mounted higher and higher; and already, as the water first seeps between the gates, grim forecast of what was to come, it showed itself now in that long, sobbing, convulsive inhalation, in that strange, sinuous, restless movement.

On went the Flopper.  There was still a yard to go—­two feet—­one.  Stopped in a sudden deathless hush was all sound.  The Flopper flung himself forward upon his face at the Patriarch’s feet.  Stopped was all movement, haggard and tense every face, strained every eye.  For a moment that seemed to span eternity, in a huddled heap, that crippled, twisted thing lay there before them motionless, without sign of life—­the venerable face above it, still intent, still listening, turned slowly downwards.  Then there was a movement, a movement that blanched the watching faces to a more pallid white—­that dangling, wobbling leg drew inward slowly, very slowly, and hip and knee, as though guided by some mighty power, immutable, supreme, came deliberately into normal form.

A shriek, a cry, a wail, a sob, a prayer—­it came now unrestrained—­hysteria was loosed in a mad ungovernable orgasm—­men clutched at each other and cowered, hiding their faces with their hands—­women dropped to their knees and, sobbing, screaming, prayed.  Loud it rose, the turmoil of human souls aghast and quailing before a manifestation that seemed to fling them face to face, uncovered, naked, before the awful power and majesty and might of Heaven itself.

They looked again—­fearfully.  The twisted thing was standing now, standing but still deformed—­with crooked neck, with curved, bent, palsied arm.  And nearer had drawn little Holmes, his head thrust forward, shaking as with the ague as he gazed on the group before him, oblivious to all else around him.

A twinge of frightful torture swept the Flopper’s face—­and with that same slow, awful deliberation the misshapen arm straightened out.  Men cried aloud again and again—­a woman fainted, another here, another there—­children wailed and ran, some shrieking, some whimpering, for the woods.