She spread her arms out over it, with a piteous gesture, like a mother trying to keep her child from harm. “Oh, don't! Oh, don't!” she implored. “It's my cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread! It's all we've got for our clothes this winter! Don't touch it, don't tear it!”
Her prayer was like a signal for its denial. One of the Hounds pushed her away and caught the cloth up. “We won't hurt it, Sister Bladen. We just want to see what a seamless garment looks like, anyway. Maybe it'll fit some of us. Here, boys, take a hold!”
He held by the outer edge of the cloth, and flung the bolt unfurling itself toward his fellows over the heads of the believing men who had crowded forward to save it from the desecration, while the woman tried to seize it from him, beseeching, imploring, “Oh, don't hurt it, Bill Murray! Oh, be careful! Don't let it drop! Oh, don't, don't, don't!”
“We can't do it any hurt, Sister Bladen, if it's got a miracle inside of it,” one of the ruffians mocked. “You tell her we wont hurt it, Jim Redfield! She'll trust you!”
The women believers were sobbing; the men gathered themselves for a struggle with the surprise sprung upon them, but held back as if in a superstitious hope of help from the god whom the women seemed not to trust in his failure of them.
“Here, you fellows!” Redfield shouted over the tossing heads before him. “What do you want to spoil her cloth for?”
His look and voice had their effect with the angry, pushing, shuffling, elbowing, wailing, weeping crowd, in a pause like the arrest of curiosity.