to the destination of that oncoming multitude.  Premonition had been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.  They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible menacing humans.  It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he as well would share in their displeasure, in their 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.