d
patch. And on a sudden, like leaves by the wind, all these were driven
before the silent throngs of the oppressed; and they were innumerable as
the sands of the sea. Their thin faces were earthy with want and
cavernous from disease, and their eyes were dull with despair. They
passed in their tattered motley, some in the fantastic rags of the
beggars of Albrecht Duerer and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain;
many wore the blouses and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the
dingy, smoke-grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a
riotous crowd in narrow streets flying in terror before the mounted
troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in strange
confusion.

Then all again was void; and Margaret's gaze was riveted upon a great,
ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone, in ghastly desolation;
and though a dead thing, it seemed to suffer a more than human pain. The
lightning had torn it asunder, but the wind of centuries had sought
in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured branches, bare of any twig,
were like a Titan's arms, convulsed with intolerable anguish. And in a
moment she grew sick with fear, for a change came into the tree, and the
tremulousness of life was in it; the rough bark was changed into brutish
flesh and the twisted branches into human arms. It became a monstrous,
goat-legged thing, more vast than the creatures of nightmare. She saw the
horns and the long beard, the great hairy legs with their hoofs, and the
man's rapacious hands. The face was horrible with lust and cruelty, and
yet it was divine. It was Pan, playing on his pipes, and the lecherous
eyes caressed her with a hideous tenderness. But even while she looked,
as the mist of early day, rising, discloses a fair country, the animal
part of that ghoulish creature seemed to fall away, and she saw a lovely
youth, titanic but sublime, leaning against a massive rock. He was more
beautiful than the Adam of Michelangelo who wakes into life at the call
of the Almighty; and, like him freshly created, he had the adorable
languor of one who feels still in his limbs the soft rain on the loose
brown earth. Naked and full of majesty he lay, the outcast son of the
morning; and she dared not look upon his face, for she knew it was
impossible to bear the undying pain that darkened it with ruthless
shadows. Impelled by a great curiosity, she sought to come nearer,
but the vast figure seemed strangely to di