“To whom?”
“To the flag.”
“But I do not honor your flag. It is the same as nothing to me.”
“We’ll make you honor it. By the shade of Washington, we’ll make you kiss it!”
“Ah, that is the autocratic boast! But I am of the people. I defy you! I will spit upon your flag!”
He stood, with bloodless face and blazing eyes, desperate and defiant. He could no longer hold his anger in check. He had spoken his mind. And he knew, or should have known, that he must now pay the penalty for his rashness. It was Ben Barriscale who, echoing the red-faced man’s suggestion, shouted:
“Make him kiss the flag!”
It was a suggestion and a demand that was caught up at once by the crowd, and immediately there was a concerted movement to carry it out. A powerful man, standing near Donatello, seized his arms and pinioned them behind his back. A dozen hands reached out to force him toward the spot where the colors still lay in the arms of the girls dressed in white.
Up to this moment Halpert McCormack had looked on disapprovingly, but had held his peace. He could remain silent no longer. His sense of fair play had been outraged. To hound this man into expressions of disloyalty and contempt and then to make him pay the humiliating penalty strained his patience to the breaking point.
“It’s not fair!” he shouted. “You drove him into it. You’ve got no right to punish him!” He started forward, with arms raised as if to strike off the hands that were gripping and pushing the defamer of the flag. But men who were not able to reach Donatello could reach his would-be defender, and they did. They held him back and pulled down his arms, and the red-faced man shouted at him: