He seemed to choke for a word, and there was a moment of awful stillness in the room. They waited, but he seemed unable to speak, and lapsed into his previous condition of stupor, leaving them smitten into wonder and praying that he might be spared.
"Do you think we had better rouse him, doctor?" the judge asked after a while.
"It will do no harm. He was trying to tell us about the affair in Freetown."
They tried to rouse him from his stupor, but failed. It was growing late in the afternoon; and, as the sun went down, they all waited and prayed.
"Have you heard the news?"
The evening service at Emmanuel Church was over, and the Rev. Howard Douglass was just going out of the church with his wife, talking with a small group of church-members, as he went, about the plan to redeem Freetown.
As they came out upon the steps, a man came walking up hastily.