burst into glad acclaim.

"The Patriarch! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"

From the little hallway came the Flopper, running--and he stopped and
gaped at Madison.

"I left him in his room fer a minute," he gasped. "He's--he's lookin'
fer Helena."

And then Madison shook himself together--and smiled ironically. And at
the smile the Flopper hurried on.

Madison stepped out onto the porch. Helena! Helena! Within him seemed to
burn a rage of hell; but it seemed, too, most strangely that for the
moment this rage was held in abeyance, that something temporarily
supplanted it--this scene before him.

Onward across the lawn moved the Patriarch, and the Flopper had joined
him now; but the Patriarch, unheeding, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, his arms still extended before him, kept on. And the people
cried aloud:

"He is coming--he is coming! The Patriarch! The Patriarch!"

Madison moved on--out upon the lawn himself.

From everywhere, from every scattered spot where they had been, men and
women ran and limped and dragged themselves along, all converging on
one point--the Patriarch.

Madison, in the midst of them now, hurried--for it was plainly evident
that the Flopper's control over the Patriarch was gone. He reached the
Patriarch and touched the other's arm--and at the touch the Patriarch
halted instantly, his hand went out and lay upon Madison's sleeve in
recognition, and he turned his face, and it was smiling and there was
relief upon it--and confidence and trust, as, suffering himself to be
guided, they started back toward the cottage.

And then upon Madison came again that sense of awe, but now intensified.
From every hand tear-stained faces greeted him, white faces, faces full
of sorrow and suffering through which struggled hope--hope--hope. They
flung themselves before the Patriarch--yet never blocked the way. They
cried, they wept, they prayed--and some were silent. It seemed that
souls, naked, stripped, bare, held themselves up to his gaze. Men,
prostrate on stretchers, tried to rise and stagger nearer--and fell.
Friends, where there were friends to help, tugged and dragged
desperately at cots--and from the cots in piteous, agonized appeal the
helpless cried out to the Patriarch to come to them. All of human agony
and fear and hope and despair and terror seemed loosed in a mad and
swirling vortex. And ever the cries arose, and ever around them, giving
way, closing in again, pressed the soul