Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/240

 And now from without there came a sound like a distant murmur. It rose and swelled, and began to roll in its volume, and then, like the clarion sound of trumpets, voices 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