The Pan-Antis were still muttering furiously over this daring act of
defiance when a shrill bugle-call pealed down the avenue. Bishop Chuff
rode out into the middle of the street on his famous coal-black
charger, John Barleycorn. There was a long hush. Then, with a wave of
his hand, he gave the signal. One hundred bands burst into the somber
and clanging strains of "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor." The great
parade had begun.

From a house-top farther up the street Dunraven Bleak watched them
come. He had taken Quimbleton's word seriously, and with his usual
enterprise had rented a roof overlooking the Boulevard, on which
several members of the Balloon staff were prepared to deal with any
startling events that might occur. A battery of telephones had been
installed on the house-top; Bleak himself sat with apparatus clamped to
his head like an operator at central. Two reporters were busy with
paper and pencil; the cartoonist sat on the cornice, with legs swinging
above two hundred feet of space, sketching the prodigious scene. The
young lady editor of the Woman's Page was there, with opera glasses,
noting down the "among those present."

It was an awe-inspiring spectacle. Between sidewalks jammed with silent
and morose citizens, the Pan-Antis passed like a conquering army. The
terrible Bishop, the man who had put military discipline into the ranks
of his mighty organization, rode his horse as the Kaiser would have
liked to ride entering Paris. His small, bitter, fanatical face wore a
deeply carved sneer. His great black beard flapped in the breeze, and
he sang as he rode. Behind him came huge floats depicting in startling
tableaux the hideous menace of the gooseberry. Bands blared and
crashed. Then, rank on rank, as far as eye could see, followed the
zealots in their garments of white. Each one, it was noticed, carried a
neat knapsack. Huge tractors rumbled along, groaning beneath a tonnage
of tracts which were shot into the watching crowd by pneumatic guns.
Banners whipped and fluttered.

The sound of shrill chanting vibrated in the blazing air like a visible
wave of power. These were conquerors of a nation, and they knew it. A
former bartender, standing in the front of the crowd, caught Chuff's
merciless gaze, wavered, and swooned. A retired distiller, sitting in
the window of the Brass Rail Club, fell dead of apoplexy.

Bleak trembled with nervousness. Had Quimbleton hoaxed him? What could
halt this mighty pagean