This was the last straw. Slow to wrath as he always was, Aleck had thus far kept his temper. But this charge filled him with sudden anger and resentment. He turned his eyes, blazing with fury, toward the boy by the rear wall, whom he knew was baiting him, and shouted:
"That's a lie, Elmer Cuddeback, and you know it!"
At once confusion reigned. People stood up and looked around to get a possible glimpse of the object of Aleck's denunciation. Some one cried: "Put him out!"
Two or three members of the Riverbeds started threateningly toward Elmer, and his friends struggled to get closer to him. An excitable woman in the audience screamed. Miss Grey was pounding vigorously with her gavel, but to no effect. Then Colonel Butler himself took matters in hand. He rose to his feet, stretched out his arm, and shouted:
"Order! Order! Resume your seats!"
People sat down again. The belligerent boys halted in their tracks. Everyone felt that the colonel must be obeyed. He waited, in commanding attitude, until order had been restored, then he continued:
"The young gentleman who undertook to respond to my address was stricken with what is commonly known as stage-fright. That is no discredit to him. It is a malady that attacked so great a man and so brave a warrior as General Grant. I may add that I, myself, have suffered from it on occasion. And now that order has been restored we will proceed with the regular program, and Master Sands will finish the delivery of his address."
He stepped back to give the respondent the floor; but Master Sands was nowhere in sight. In the confusion he had disappeared. The colonel looked around him expectantly for a moment, and then again advanced to the front of the platform.
"In the absence of our young friend," he said, "whose address, I am sure, would have been received with the approbation it deserves, I, myself, will occupy a portion of the time thus made vacant, in still further expounding to you—"
But at this moment, notwithstanding his effort to avoid it, he again caught his daughter's warning look, and saw her forefinger held threateningly in the air.