They feared that the intrusion at such a time
of a personality so worldly must raise fresh difficulties against the
performance of the expected miracle.
Nor were matters improved when at the crowd's edge he halted and questioned
one of them as to the meaning of this pilgrimage. I did not hear the
peasant's answer; but I saw the white, haughty face suddenly thrown up, and
I caught his next question:
"When did it last bleed?"
Again an inaudible reply, and again his ringing voice--"That would be
before this young hermit came? And to-day it will not bleed, you say?"
He flashed me a last keen glance of his eyes, which had grown narrow and
seemed laden with mockery. The little lady whispered something to him, in
answer to which he laughed contemptuously.
"Fool's mummery," he snapped, and drew her on, she going, it seemed to me,
reluctantly.
But the crowd had heard him and the insult offered to the shrine. A deep-
throated bay rose up in menace, and some leapt to their feet as if they
would attack him.
He checked, and wheeled at the sound. "How now?" he cried, his voice a
trumpet-call, his eyes flashing terribly upon them; and as dogs crouch to
heel at the angry bidding of their master, the multitude grew silent and
afraid under the eyes of that single steel-clad man.
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