The lawyer led his friends through the gate, and began pushing his way up the gravelled path through the crowd. No special opposition was offered to his progress, for the air was so full of snow now that only those immediately affected knew anything about it. Although the path was fairly thronged, nobody seemed to have any idea why he was standing there. Those who spoke appeared in the main to regard the matter as a joke, the point of which was growing more and more obscure. Except for some sporadic horn-blowing and hooting nearer to the house, the activity of the assemblage was confined to a handful of boys, who mustered among them two or three kerosene oil torches treasured from the last Presidential campaign, and a grotesque jack-o’-lantem made of a pumpkin and elevated on a broom-stick. These urchins were running about among the little groups of bystanders, knocking off one another’s caps, shouting prodigiously, and having a good time. As Reuben and those accompanying him approached the house, some of these lads raised the cry of “Here’s the coppers!” and the crowd at this seemed to close up with a simultaneous movement, while a murmur ran across its surface like the wind over a field of corn. This sound was one less of menace or even excitement than of gratification that at last something was going to happen. One of the boys with a torch, in the true spirit of his generation, placed himself in front of Reuben and marched with mock gravity at the head of the advancing group. This, drolly enough, lent the movement a semblance of authority, or at least of significance, before which the men more readily than ever gave way. At this the other boys with the torches and jack-o’-lantem fell into line at the rear of Tracy’s immediate supporters, and they in turn were followed by the throng generally. Thus whimsically escorted, Reuben reached the front steps of the mansion. A more compact and apparently homogeneous cluster of men stood here, some of them even on the steps, and dark and indistinct as everything was, Reuben leaped to the conclusion that these were the men at least visibly responsible for this strange gathering. Presumably they were taken by surprise at his appearance with such a following. At any rate, they, too, offered no concerted resistance, and he mounted to the platform of the steps without difficulty. Then he turned and whispered to a friend to have the boys with the torches also come up. This was a suggestion gladly obeyed, not least of all by the boy with the low-comedy pumpkin, whose illumination created a good-natured laugh.