He had not gone far, perhaps ten yards--no more. By the group around the wheel-chair, almost in the center of the line, stood Madison, his chin in his hand in a meditative, thoughtful attitude, the single soul who watched the scene from under lowered lids; Thornton had involuntarily edged a little forward from behind the chair until he stood now at its side in a strange, abashed way as though his own personality were over-ruled, obliterated, his face with a white sternness upon it, his eyes, like all other eyes, agleam with an unnatural fire; Mrs. Thornton had pulled herself forward in the chair, one hand clutching at her breast, the frail fingers of the other woven in a grasp so tight around the arm of the chair that the flesh was bloodless; a little way off, a group of three, the two salesmen and the metropolitan newspaper man, seemed as though stricken into stone, stripped of all assurance, all complacence, awed, tense, palpitant, as the patched, bare-legged tatterdemalion of ten from the fields, that stood beside them, was awed and tense and palpitant. And away on either side stretched the line of white, rigid faces, the never-ending, burning eyes--but the silence with that shriek was gone now, for another woman and another, overwrought, needing but that sudden shock to unnerve them utterly, shrieked in turn--and through the line seemed to run a shudder, and it moved a little though no foot stirred, moved with a strange, sinuous, rocking, swaying movement, from the hips, backward and forward and to either side. Men raised their eyes, stole frightened, questioning glances at their neighbors--and fixed their eyes on the Flopper again--on the Flopper and that majestic figure in the center of the lawn, so calm of mien, of attitude and pose. Once again the Flopper's eyes swept the scene. A few feet in advance of the crowd, as though drawn irresistibly forward, young Holmes hung upon his crutch. The boy's soul seemed in his face--hope, a world of it, as he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper; his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional excitement. Still once again the Flopper's eyes swept the line of men and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable hysteria--and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous supplication, and, jerking himself forward, went on. Slowly, very slowly at first, he resumed his way, crawling it seemed by no more than a painful inch on inch, in mortal pain, in mortal agony and struggle--then gradually his movements began to quicken, as though growing upon him were a mad, elated haste that he could not control--quicker and quicker he went, pitching and lurching wildly; from a pace that was beyond him.