And as the orator closed, with a group of men he threw himself upon the structure of the piping of the flaming well. The wooden tower swayed and rocked and fell; and with a roar like the ocean the gas, freed from its casing, flooded the sky with its flare of fire. A great mass of pebbles and timbers rose with the first outburst, and fell flaming on the shouting crowd below; then, igniting close to the earth, and even below its surface, running rapidly around the rock, leaping and tossing in liquid tongues, the red rills seemed to spring from every crevice in the earth, until the place that had been the rostrum was sunken in a lake of flame. The Pole had kept his arm extended, as one who invokes a spell, until the shock of the explosion had gone by, and all the flaming timbers fell; then, when the fire was steady, reddening the valley even to the distant mountain-tops, he swept his arm in a gesture not without some dignity toward the silent city. With a hoarse cry the multitude seemed to take his meaning; and the sea of swarthy faces, red-sashed men and olive-cheeked women, with their motley dresses, and their odd diversity of foreign cries, swept downward to the city’s rolling mills. Of all the crowd who spoke that night not one American except James Starbuck; of all the thoughts in those ten thousand heads, scarce one the fathers of the republic could have owned with honor; of all these men indeed, not one who understood the principles which gave his country birth.--Derwent was reflecting. Where were the true Americans? Where were the descendants of the colonies, and Virginia and Old New England? What had been Starbuck’s training, that he talked like that? But, you will remember, it was long since Jem Starbuck had left that old New England village, dying out amidst its sturdy hills; and his old uncle Samuel Wolcott had hanged himself, a long year since, to the rafter from the barn in his hillside homestead. CHAPTER XXVIII. ARTHUR HAS A LITTLE DINNER. Arthur was thinking of getting up a little dinner for some of his most worthy friends and most valuable acquaintances, and he was sitting in the reading room of his favorite club, trying to make up his list. There was a reception at the Livingstones that afternoon, and he proposed going; but this deuce of a list took much more time than one would suppose possible. He threw impatiently into the waste-paper basket the third tentative sketch which had proved impossible, and looked at his watch. The cards said half-past three--“to meet Miss Holyoke”--it was indeed the first time Gracie was to appear out of her deep mourning. Arthur looked at his watch. It was after three already. He had thought of going early, before the people came; however, he would make one attempt more, and meantime ring and order the cab.