"Go on with your speech," said Peter in a fierce undertone to Hare.
"He's going to faint."
"Let us give honor to whom honor is due," cried Hare, hastily, and so resumed his remarks.
Peter's melancholy prediction, though it spread quickly among the crowd after Varney left the porch, was quite unfounded. Varney had not the least idea of fainting. At Hare's tribute, which was as unexpected as he felt it to be totally undeserved, and the sudden rain of eyes upon him, an unaccountable dizziness had seized him, while he stood reluctantly bowing; he had thrust out his hand and caught hold of the post. This blackness passed as quickly as it had come. The next instant he felt as fit a man as ever; and to the tender requests of his host, Mr. Hackley, that he should withdraw into the house for a "leetle rest-up," he returned a laughing refusal. For this was his last appearance in Hunston, as well as his first in recent days, and very strongly did he desire to make it testify to his warm interest in the town's great day and the personal triumph of his friend, Peter Maginnis.
What removed Varney so abruptly from the Hackley porch and the public view was the sudden fulfilment of quite another prediction of Peter's: the one about the return to Hunston of the gum-shod Mr. Higginson.
The news came without warning. At just the moment when the Mayor replunged into his interrupted oratory, Varney became aware that a low, anxious voice behind him was insistently calling his name. He turned, and saw the figure of a man standing in Hackley's entryway, just inside the door; he had evidently slipped in from the rear; and now, catching the young man's eye, he began mysteriously beckoning and making signs.
"Kin I speak to you a minute, Mr. Varney?" he called in the same dramatic whisper.
Varney, in some surprise, advanced to the doorway and stepped inside the entry after the stranger—a poorly dressed fellow with an unshaven chin and a collarless neck.
"Well? What do you want, my man? And how do you know my name?"
At that the man gave the air of exploding, though his voice remained only a whisper, at once apologetic and immensely reproachful.
"Know your name, sir! Why, excuse me for usin' it so free, but I guess there ain't nobody in Hunston don't know you, Mr. Varney! Why, Mr. Varney, my six-year-old kid c'd pick you right out o' that crowd out there, same as 't was her pa, what with seein' your picture in the papers an' all, an' I guess there ain't anything you'd ever want in Hunston you couldn't have just for the trouble o' namin' it."