They were mostly women past the time of life when men look at them curiously, but once Redfield was startled by meeting a young girl, as he was trying to go out, and began losing himself with her in that hopeless encounter of people who try to give way to each other and keep passing to the same side at once. Her face and her red hair burned one fire, but at last she stopped stone still, and let him go by, with a sort of angry challenge in her blue eyes. He knew that it was Jane Gillespie without knowing her to speak with, as he would have said, and he knew that against her father's will she was one of the followers of Dylks. The idolatry was not yet open and scandalous, but since then he had heard his mother denouncing her as a worthless hussy with the other women who had worshiped Dylks in that frenzy at the Temple. He walked up and down, passing near where she stood with her father and Hughey Blake, and lost his breath at each approach and caught it again at each remove. It so vividly seemed that he must speak to her, though he did not know what he wished to say, that it was as if he really had done so, when he heard one of the Hounds saying, “Well, and what are you goin' to do about it, Jim?” Then he heard himself boasting, “I'm going after Dylks myself; and if he'll come peaceably, and do his miracle I'll take him for my god, and if he won't, God have mercy on him!” He was answering his jeering questioner in his words, but his eyes were on the girl; her own eyes were lowered after a glance at her father and Hughey Blake, and his vow remained in his ears a foolish vaunt. While he stood unable to return to his place, a voice which no one knew, came from the darkness outside. “Behold,” it said, “I am the Presence of the Most High, and I come to you with my Peace. The miracle that ye wait to see has been wrought already unseen of you. The cloth before you has been touched by my Power, and turned into the seamless raiment which ye seek as a sign. But it shall not be shown to you now. Ye shall see it seven days and seven nights hence on the eighth night at the Temple. Till then, have patience, have faith. Thus saith the Lord.” The voice died from the medley of scriptural phrase and a shiver of awe passed over those who had heard. One of the believing women called out, “Praise ye the Lord!” Then a yell of mockery broke from the Hounds and some one shouted, “Let's have a look!” and the crowd rushed upon the roll of cloth which lay on the table, where the woman who had brought it in her arms had put it, and had stood patiently, anxiously, trustfully waiting. She spread her arms out over it, with a piteous gesture, like a mother trying to keep her child from harm. “Oh, don't! Oh, don't!” she implored. “It's _my_ cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread! It's all we've got for our clothes this winter! Don't touch it, don't tear it!”