r punishment: for he
was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
waiting.

Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.

Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
front door.

Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
multiplied.

The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.

This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
of the curious. The licence he had been absent