Mrs. Thornton had dropped back on the couch and her face was turned away from the others, but she stretched out her hand to her husband.

"I am not asking very much, Robert, dear--am I?" she said. "Not very much. Won't you do this for me?"

Thornton bit his lips and scowled at the Flopper.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" he muttered--and moving to the side of the car pushed a bell-b.u.t.ton viciously. "Sam," he snapped, as his colored man appeared, "go and tell the conductor that I want my car put off on the siding at Needley."

"Yes, sah," said Sam.

Thornton sat down again heavily.

"Mabbe," announced the Flopper tactfully, "mabbe I'd better be gettin'

back to me valise--we're most dere, ain't we?"

Mrs. Thornton turned toward him.

"No; please don't go, Mr. Coogan--it's too hard for you to get through the train. Sam will get your things as soon as he comes back. Do stay right where you are until we get to Needley."

"No; don't think of going, Mr. Coogan," said Thornton savagely.

The Flopper looked at Mrs. Thornton gratefully, and at Mr. Thornton thoughtfully.

"T'anks!" said the Flopper pleasantly--and wriggled himself into a more comfortable position in his chair.

Half an hour later, the train, that stopped only on signal to discharge eastbound pa.s.sengers from Portland, drew up at Needley--and Hiram Higgins, on the platform, stared at a scene never before witnessed in the history of the town.

It was not one pa.s.senger, or two, or three, that alighted--they streamed in a bewildering fashion from every vestibule of every car. It is true that the majority got back into the train later, but that did not lessen the effect any on Mr. Higgins. Mr. Higgins' jaw dropped, and he grabbed at his chin whiskers for support.

"Merciful daylights!" he breathed heavily. "Now what in the land's sakes be it all about?" His eyes, following the hurrying pa.s.sengers, fixed on the twisted shape of the Flopper, being helped to the platform from the private car.

"Three cheers for Coogan!" yelled some excitable pa.s.senger.

The cheers were given with a will.

"Good luck to you, Coogan!" shouted another--and the crowd took it up in chorus: "Good luck to you, Coogan!"

"_Coogan!_"--Mr. Higgins' face paled, and he took a firmer grip on his whiskers. "Now if you ain't gone an' put your fool foot in it, Hiram Higgins," he said miserably. "If that there's the fellow that you writ to, you've just laid out to make a plumb fool of the Patriarch, 'cause I reckon the Almighty knew His own mind when He made a critter like that, an' didn't calc'late to have His work upsot much this side of the grave--not even by the Patriarch."

--IX--

THE PILGRIMAGE

Faith is an inheritance common to the human race; and the human race in its daily life, in its daily dealings, man to man, could not go on without it--but faith is a matter of degree. Faith, in the abstract, the element of it, is inborn in every soul; and while dormant, until put to a crucial test along any given line, is boundless and unlimited--a sort of tacitly accepted, existing state, unquestioned. Faith in many is a st.u.r.dy, virile thing--to a certain point. It is the fire that proves.

Needley had faith in the Patriarch--a faith that never before had been questioned. But Needley had more than that--Needley held the Patriarch in affection, as a cherished thing, almost sacredly, almost as an idol.

Faith the simple people of Needley had always had--to a certain point--but it faltered before this grotesque, inhuman, twisted shape that squatted in the road before the Congress Hotel like a hideous caricature of an abnormal toad. Their faith failed to bridge the span that gave the Patriarch power over such as this, and they saw their idol shattered in their own eyes, and held up to mockery before the eyes of these strangers who had so suddenly and tempestuously swarmed upon them.

Hiram Higgins, seeking out Doc Madison inside the hotel, was in a state bordering on distraction.

"I druve him over from the station 'cause he couldn't walk, him an' a man, an' two women, an' a wheel-chair," Mr. Higgins explained. "But what's to be done now? He wants me to drive him out to the Patriarch's.

I got faith in the Patriarch, but I never said he could work miracles--there ain't no one on earth could straighten that critter out.

Don't stand to reason that the Patriarch's to be made a fool of."

"Certainly not," agreed Madison emphatically. "It's most unfortunate. I suppose all of us here in Needley"--he looked around at the a.s.sembled group of leading citizens--"feel the same way, too?"

"Of course we do," said Mr. Higgins helplessly. "Couldn't feel no ways else."

Madison laid his hand suddenly, impressively, upon Mr. Higgins' shoulder and looked meaningly into Mr. Higgins' eyes--and into the eyes of the selectmen, the overseers of the poor, the general-store proprietor, and the school committee.

"Don't drive him over, then," he said significantly. "Don't any of the rest of you do it either--and tell everybody else not to. Make him _crawl_. If he's determined to go, let him get there by himself if he can, make him crawl--he'll never be able to do it."

"That's so," said Mr. Higgins, brightening, while the others nodded; then, dubiously: "But s'pose he _does_ get there--how be we goin' to stop him?"

"If he can get there by himself you can't stop him," said Madison seriously. "You can't do anything like that. To use force would be carrying things too far, and would only place the Patriarch in a worse light. If this fellow--what's his name?--Coogan?--can crawl there, let him--that's his own business. None of _us_ are encouraging him, the Patriarch didn't ask him to come, and no one has a right to expect miracles--so it can't hurt the Patriarch seriously under those conditions. Besides, if this Coogan has got faith enough to crawl that mile, who knows what might happen--make him crawl."

Mr. Higgins, with a grim nod, headed a determined exodus from the hotel office--and Madison strolled out onto the veranda.

Needley was in a furor. The news spread like an oil-fed conflagration.

The farmers left their work in the fields and hurried into the village; from the houses and cottages came the women and children to cl.u.s.ter around the Congress Hotel; from the station, scarcely of less interest to the inhabitants than the Flopper himself, straggled in those curious enough to have left the train, nearly a dozen of them--and amongst them Pale Face Harry coughed, as he trudged laboriously along.

Larger and larger grew the circle around the Flopper, filling and blocking the road, overflowing into front yards, and ma.s.sing on the little lawn of the hotel clear up to the veranda--until fields and houses were deserted, and to the last inhabitant Needley was there.

Upon the ground squatted the Flopper, his eyes sweeping the ring of faces that was like a wall around him--the grinning faces of his fellow pa.s.sengers from the train; the stony, concerned and rather sullen faces of the men of Needley; the anxious, excited faces of the women; the bewildered, curious and somewhat frightened faces of the children, who pushed and shoved their elders for better vantage ground.

The Flopper licked his lips, and renewed the appeal he had been making for nearly five minutes.

"Ain't no one goin' to drive me out to de Patriarch's?"

"Horses are all busy in the fields," said a voice, uncompromisingly.

"Yes," said the Flopper, with bitter irony, "drivin' each other around, while youse are here starin' at me an' won't help."

His eyes caught Doc Madison's from the veranda and held an instant to read a message and interpret the almost imperceptible, but significant, movement of Madison's head.

"Gee!" said the Flopper to himself, as his eyes swept the faces around him again. "Dis is a nice game de Doc's planted on me--he wants me to do de wiggle out dere fer de rubes! Ain't dey a peachy lot--look at de saucer eyes on de kids!"

Mrs. Thornton, in her wheel-chair on the inner edge of the circle, turned to her husband.

"It's very strange that no one seems willing to drive him," she said.

"Oh, not very," responded Thornton, with a short laugh. "I don't blame them--they don't want this healer of theirs made a monkey of."

"If no one will drive him, he shall have my wheel-chair," announced Mrs.

Thornton impulsively. "I think it is a perfect shame--the poor man!"