Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/117

 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 cluster 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.