"
This cry he repeated at awful intervals of about a minute, walking
slowly through every street, lane, and close of the town. The children
followed him in staring silence; the women gazed from their doors in
awe as he passed. The insanity which gleamed in his eyes, and his pale
long-drawn countenance, heightened the effect of the terrible
prediction. His belief took theirs by storm.
The men smiled to each other, but could not keep it up in the presence
of their wives and sisters. They said truly that he was only a madman.
But as prophets have always been taken for madmen, so madmen often pass
for prophets; and even Stumpin' Steenie, the town-constable, had too
much respect either to his prophetic claims, or his lunacy, perhaps
both, to take him into custody. So through the streets of Glamerton he
went on his bare feet, with tattered garments, proclaiming aloud the
coming destruction, He walked in the middle of the street, and turned
aside for nothing. The coachman of the Royal Mail had to pull up his
four greys on their haunches to keep them off the defiant prophet, and
leave him to pursue the straight line of his mission. The ministers
warned the people on the following Sunday against false prophets, but
did not say that man was a false prophet, while with their own
denunciations they went on all the same.
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