Throughout the whole morning small parties, thus discussing the subject, sought to gain a view of the man who filled their thoughts. Inquisitively they came and, looking in at the doorway of the cabin, surveyed the youth, who sat just across the threshold, mumbling to himself and bowing to them with a pitiable smile of welcome. Then, silently, they would return to their various labors, awe-struck and uneasy. But at mid-day there was a larger gathering at Vytal’s door. Ralph Contempt stood in the centre of the circle, describing rapidly his misadventures with a new grasp of detail and some continuity of incident. His mental powers had evidently been refreshed by sleep and sustenance; his memory now offered a more vivid and coherent depiction of the fight, bondage, and escape. His listeners, men and women, stood enthralled and terrified, the cold fingers of fear insidiously touching their nerves and heart-strings to play the shivering discord of alarm. Perhaps no instrument was more perfectly attuned to the notes of apprehension than the heart of Ananias Dare. He stood near the speaker, with an ill-disguised attempt to suppress the terror that, like an east wind, froze his marrow with an actual chill. He was entirely sober, and, therefore, completely unmanned. His face, pallid and tense, was yet beautiful, its terror strangely heightening the effect of beauty as though by a magic but despicable art. For the expression, emasculated by fright, was remembered long after by those who had read the reflection of its fear in their own hearts. The shallowest eye can express the deepest apprehension; the nature devoid of capacity for all other intense emotion, may yet be keenly and desperately subject to the power of fear. The study of cowardice reveals peculiar inconsistencies. For instance, here stood Ananias, a man of insignificant psychal stature, surpassing all his fellows in the height of his alarm. His eyes, often but vague films beneath the fumes of wine, were now clarified and made brilliant by the horror of their gaze. And here, too, listening to the narrative of Ralph Contempt, stood Simon Ferdinando, a coward of another sort, with eyes more furtive and less intense, who seemed already to consider the question of escape, while the other only remained paralyzed by the menace of a danger that might at any time repeat itself. But Dare bore unmistakable traces even now of gentle birth and a lost manhood, whereas Ferdinando appeared not unlike a frightened rat looking for its hole. The one inspired contempt and pity, the other contempt alone.