From the cottage door across the lawn came two figures--a girl in
simple, clinging white, her head bowed, the sun itself seeming to caress
the dark brown wealth of hair upon her head, changing it to glinting
strands of burnished copper; and beside her walked the Patriarch, his
hand resting lightly upon her arm, a wondrous figure of a man, majestic,
simple, grand, his silvered-hair bared to the sun, his face illumined.

"There he is, mister!" whispered young Holmes hoarsely. "There he is! Go
on, mister, go on--see what he can do for you!"

There came a sound that was like a great, gasping intake of breath, as
men and women watched. Out toward the Patriarch, alone now, the Flopper
began to wriggle and writhe his way along. God in Heaven have pity! What
was this sight they looked upon--this poor, distorted, mangled thing
that grovelled in the earth--that figure towering there in the sunlight
with venerable white beard and hair, erect, symbolic of some strange,
mystic power that awed them, his head turned slightly in a curious
listening attitude, the sightless eyes closed, upon the face a great
calm like a solemn benediction.

Fell a stillness that was as the stillness of death; came a hush until
in men's ears was the quick, fierce pound and throb of their own hearts.
On, on toward the Patriarch slithered and twisted that frightful
deformity that they had followed over that long, torturing mile--on, on
he went, and they watched scarce drawing breath, their faces white,
their very limbs held as in a palsied, fearsome spell--and then, sudden,
abrupt, terrifying, there rose a shriek, wild, hysterical, prolonged, in
a woman's voice, the cadence wavering from guttural to shrill and ending
in a high-pitched, broken scream.