Something in the symbolism of this negro grinning at him over the heads of the people hanging breathless on his words sent a wave of sickening fear to his heart. In vain he struggled to throw the feeling off in the midst of his impassioned appeal. It was impossible. For the remaining half hour he spoke as if in a trance. Unconsciously his voice was lowered to a strange intense monotone that sent the chills down the spines of his hearers.
He closed his speech in a silence that was strangling.
The people were dazed and he was half-way down the steps of the rude platform before they sufficiently recovered to break into round after round of cheering.
He had unconsciously made the most powerful speech of his life, and no man in all the crowd that he had hypnotized could have dreamed the grim secret which had been the source of his inspiration.
Without a moment's delay he found Andy, examined the package he brought and hurried to his room.
"Everything all right at home, Andy?" he asked with apparent carelessness.
The negro was still lost in admiration of Norton's triumph over his hostile audience.
"Yassah, you sho did set 'em afire wid dat speech, major!" he said with a laugh.
"And I asked you if everything was all right at home?"
"Oh, yassah, yassah—everything's all right. Of cose, sah, dey's a few little things always happenin'. Dem pigs get in de garden las' week an' et everything up, an' dat ole cow er own got de hollow horn agin. But everything else all right, sah."