Chirgwin, picking up his hat and buttoning his coat,
retreated after her before the volume of Thomasin's virago attack. Tom
stood open-mouthed and silent, dumfounded at the tremendous spectacle of
his mother's rage and his father's stricken silence. Then, as Mrs. Tregenza
slammed the door and wept, her husband sunk slowly down with something
strangely like terror in his eyes. The man in truth had just passed through
a physical crisis of alarming nature. He sat in his easy-chair now, removed
his hat, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with hands that
shook. It was not what he had heard or beheld that woke alarm in a spirit
which had never known it till then, but what he had felt: a horror which
crowded down upon every sense, gripped his volition with unseen hands,
blinded him, stopped his ears, held his limbs, stirred his brains into a
whirling waste. He knew now that in his moment of passion he had stood upon
the very brink of some terrific, shattering evil, possibly of death itself.
Body or brain or both had passed through a great, unknown danger; and now,
dazed and for the time much aged, he looked about him with slow
eyes--mastered the situation, and realized the incident was ended.
"The Lard--'the Lard is King,'" he said, and stopped a moment. Then he
slowly rose to his feet and with the old voice, though it shook and slurred
somewhat upon his tongue, spoke that text which served him in all occasions
of unusual stress and significance.
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