Just then, the speaker ended, and sat down, amidst a rushing rustle of the audience, and some slight applause. There was a minute’s intermission, during which Harrington’s eye swept over the multitude, seated in rows around him, and filling the gallery, which extended in a horse-shoe curve around the walls of the oblong hall. Both sexes were about equally represented in the concourse, which was dotted here and there with the dark faces of negroes. The platform was occupied by a number of the anti-slavery leaders, men and women. The chairman, who was leaning from his seat in hasty conference with two or three persons, was the gallant Francis Jackson, a wealthy citizen, who, when the “gentlemen” of Boston had broken up an anti-slavery meeting of women, fifteen years before, opened his house to the outcasts, at the imminent peril of having it razed by the mob. But he was resolved to defend free speech, and in this cause, said he, “let my walls fall if they must: they will appear of little value after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.” Such was the Roman deed, the Roman word, of Francis Jackson. Near him sat Garrison. The light of the chandelier shone full on the bald head and high-featured, dauntless face of the grand Puritan—a face in which blended the austere gentleness of Brewster with the stern integrity and solemn enthusiasm of Vane. Not far distant was the antique and noble countenance of Burleigh, with its long beard and lengths of ringlets giving it the character of some of the heads mediæval painters have imagined for Jesus. An orator he, whose massive and definite logic ran burning with Miltonian sweep, and could burst, when he so chose, in an iron hail of Miltonian invective. By his side, Harrington saw the domed brow and Socratic features of the mighty Theodore, with the lips curling in some rich stroke of whispered wit, which brought a momentary smile to the face of Burleigh. Behind them was the rugged and salient visage of Parker Pillsbury, a man whose speech rode like the Pounder of Bivar, and smote with a flail. Before Harrington’s eye had wandered from him, the chairman rose, announcing a name which was lost in the sudden pour of applause that swept up from the front, and spread from rank to rank with loud cheers, and then at once the whole concourse burst into a surging and tossing uproar of acclamation, as a beautiful patrician figure, dressed in black, came forward on the lighted platform.