"But how do you account for these miraculous cures?" they asked.

"You have seen them--the results," Madison replied. "You know the cures to be living, vital, irrefutable facts--don't you?"

"Yes," they agreed.

"Then," said Madison, "there can be but one answer--faith. There is no other--faith. Are we not, in view of what has happened, of what exists before our very eyes, forced to the belief that faith is the greatest thing, the most potential factor in the world?"

"And do you believe then that all who come here will be cured?"

Madison shook his head.

"Ah, no," he said; "far from it. Many will come with but the semblance of faith, and for those there can be no cure--that is evident on the face of it, is it not?"

They interviewed Thornton--and Thornton, too, talked to them, but the very presence of Mrs. Thornton was weightier far than words.

They interviewed the Holmes, and they interviewed Needley individually and collectively; and they interviewed Helena--but they did not interview the Patriarch. Here Helena barred their way--they were free to enter the cottage, to copy the names, the record of gifts inscribed in the book, already a long list for Needley had required no other incentive to give than the example that had been set--but that was all.

Quietly, with demure simplicity, Helena, prompted by Madison, like a priestess who guards some holy, inner shrine, told them that sensational notoriety had no place there--and the notoriety for that very cause became the greater! Not that they were denied a sight of the Patriarch's venerable and saintly form--they were permitted to catch glimpses of him on the beach, on the lawn, walking with bowed head in meditation, a figure whose simple majesty inspired words and columns of glowing tribute--but from personal contact, Helena and the Flopper, always in attendance, warded them off; retreating always to the privacy of the cottage, to the inner rooms.

All this had taken four days; and now, on the fourth day, there came to Needley the vanguard of those who sought this new healing power--just a few of them, two or three, like far, outflung skirmishers evidencing the presence of the army corps to follow. With the reporters, as far as Madison was concerned, it was simple enough; he had but to let them go their way, to let them revel in the stories that were on every tongue, to let them view with their own eyes _facts_, while he, modestly and diffidently, full of quiet earnestness, effaced himself, never thrusting himself forward, talking to them only when they pressed him--but the handling of the sufferers who would flock to Needley in response to a newspaper publicity and endors.e.m.e.nt that had been beyond his wildest dreams, was quite another matter. Madison viewed the first arrivals--brought in from the station on cot beds to the Waldorf Hotel--and retired to his room in the Congress Hotel to wrestle with the niceties and minutiae of the problem.

"You see," said Madison to the tip of his cigar, as he tilted back his chair and extended his legs full length with his heels comfortably up on the table edge, "you see, I believe in faith all right--and that's no josh. But the trouble with faith is that it's about the scarcest article on earth--and I haven't got any more Floppers to lead the way." Madison adroitly sent the cigar ash through the window with a tap of his forefinger on the body of the cigar--he frowned, and for a long time sat musingly silent. Then he spoke again; this time addressing the toes of his boots: "With the house sold out for the season, the box-office doing itself proud and the audience crazy over the first two acts, how about Act Three--h'm?--how about Act Three? Kind of a delicate proposition, the staging of Act Three--and it's time for the curtain to go up. I can hear 'em stamping out front now. I can't pull off any more orgies like last Monday afternoon, even if I wanted to--but everybody's got to have a run for their money. Say, how about Act Three?"

Madison burned up quite a little tobacco in the interval before supper, and quite a little more afterward before the setting for his perplexing "Third Act" appeared to unfold itself satisfactorily before his mind--indeed, it was close onto half past ten when, by a roundabout way, he very cautiously and silently approached the Patriarch's cottage.

In the front of the cottage, the Shrine-room, as he christened it, and the Patriarch's sleeping room were both dark. Madison pa.s.sed around to the beach side--here, Helena's room was dark too, but in the Flopper's window, the end room next to the kitchen and woodshed, there was a light. The night was warm, and, though the shade was drawn, the window was open. Madison whistled softly, and the Flopper stuck out his head.

"h.e.l.lo, Flopper," said Madison; "come out here--I want to have a talk with you. Helena in bed?"

"No; she's out," replied the Flopper.

"Well, hurry up!" said Madison. "Come around in front by the trellis where we can see the other fellow first if anybody happens to be strolling about."

Madison withdrew from the window and walked around to the front of the cottage. Here, a few yards from the porch, by the trellis, already beginning to be leafy green, was a rustic bench on which he seated himself. The moon was not full, but there was light enough to enable him to see across the lawn through the interposing row of maples, and, hidden by the shadows himself, the seat strategetically met his requirements.

Presently, the Flopper came out of the front door and joined him.

"Say, Doc," announced the Flopper abruptly, "de Patriarch's been askin'

fer youse yesterday an' to-day."

"Asking?" repeated Madison.

"Sure," said the Flopper. "He can scrawl if he is blind, can't he? He scrawls yer name on de slate. We can't tell him nothin', an' he's kinder got de fidgets like he t'inks youse had flown de coop."

"That's so," said Madison. "It is rather difficult to communicate with him, isn't it? I guess we'll have to get him some raised letters."

"What's them?" inquired the Flopper.

"I don't know exactly," Madison answered. "I never saw any, but I believe they have such things. Been asking for me, has he? Well, I'll fix it to see him to-morrow. Where did you say Helena had gone?"

"I said she was out," said the Flopper. "If you ask me where, I'd say de same place as last night an' de night before--down to dat private car wid his nibs. Say, dere's some cla.s.s to dat guy all right, an' I guess Helena ain't got her eyes shut."

"Hey!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Madison. "What do you mean?"

"Well, he's got de rocks, ain't he?" declared the Flopper. "Why shouldn't she be after him? Dat's wot we're here fer, ain't it, de whole bunch of us?--an' she ain't t'rowin' us, is she, if she sees a chanst to pick up somet'ing on her own?"

Madison turned quickly on the Flopper.

"You mean," he said sharply, "that there's something going on between Helena and Thornton--already?"

"Aw, stop kiddin'!" said the Flopper. "Already! Wot's 'already' got to do wid it? We ain't none of us church members, are we? Say, where'd you pick up Helena yerself--and how long did it take youse? I don't know whether dere's anyt'ing goin' on or not--mabbe she's only gettin'

lonely--youse ain't hung around her much lately, Doc."

Madison laughed suddenly.

"You're talking through your hat, Flopper," he said shortly. "You don't know Helena."

"It's a wise guy dat knows skirts," said the Flopper profoundly; then, with something approaching a sigh: "Say, Doc, dere's a lalapazoozoo, a peach down here."

"Hullo!" exclaimed Madison, shooting a hurried and critical glance at the Flopper in the moonlight. "What's this, Flopper--what's this? What have you been up to? You're supposed to be attending strictly to business."

"An' you needn't t'ink I ain't," a.s.serted the Flopper. "But I can't stop de town fallin' over itself to bring de whole farmyard, an' eggs, an'

b.u.t.ter, an' flour, an' everyt'ing else out here every mornin', can I?

She's blown in twice wid cream fer de Patriarch."

"What's her name?" inquired Madison quizzically.

"Mamie Rodgers," said the Flopper. "She says her old man keeps a store in de village."

"I know her," nodded Madison. "Pretty girl and all right, Flopper. But mind what you're doing, that's all. I don't want any complications to queer things around here--understand? But let's get down to the business that I came out about--the lay from now on. You can put Helena wise."

"Sure," said the Flopper earnestly.

"Well then, listen," said Madison. "The patients have begun to arrive--there were three of them in to-day. There's no more circus parades--everything's under the tent after this. I want you to wean the Patriarch entirely from that front room--that's to be free for anybody to enter so's they can drink in atmosphere--and see the contribution box. But they don't see the Patriarch. Get his armchair into his own room, make him comfortable there--get the idea? Now, there's no consultation hours--the Patriarch can't be seen just by asking for him--the only chance they get at the Patriarch is by an exercise of patience that'll work their faith up to a pitch that'll do them some good. The harder it is to get a thing, the more it's worth and the more you want it--that's the principle. See?"

"Sure," said the Flopper, licking his lips.

"Sometimes," Madison went on, "you're to keep the Patriarch under cover for two or three days, while they hang around working themselves into a frenzy. And when they do see him they have to scramble for it. You don't lead him out to them--ever. Make them waylay him when you take him for a walk--make them crawl and hop and show they've got faith, make them believe they've got faith themselves--we'll get some more cures, or near-cures anyway, that way, and we won't get them any other way, and we've got to have some sort of cures coming along fairly regularly. Do you get me, Flopper? If there's a party on a cot a hundred yards away and he begs you to bring the Patriarch to him, say him nay. Everybody has got to get into the reserved paddock by themselves--tell them that no man can be cured who has not got the faith to reach the Patriarch by himself--tell them to get up and _walk_ to him--tell them what you did."

"Swipe me!" said the Flopper. "Say, Doc, youse are de one an' only. I gotcher--put it up to _dem_ everytime."

"Exactly," said Madison. "It's their move every minute--make them feel that if they don't get what they're after it's their own fault--that it's their own lack of faith that's to blame. And the longer they have to wait to see the Patriarch, the more they become impressed that faith is necessary, and--oh, well, psychology is the greatest jollier of them all."

"Eh?" inquired the Flopper. "I ain't on dere, Doc."

"It's very simple," smiled Madison, "They'll want to convince themselves that they _have_ got faith, that it's all bottled up and ready to have the cork drawn when called for, and they'll prove it to themselves by laying an offering upon the shrine as evidence of faith _before_ the goods are delivered."

"I gotcher!" said the Flopper enthusiastically. "Why say, Doc, dat's de way I'd do meself--swipe me, if I wouldn't!"