CHAPTER 22No one spoke. Eliphalet Greer must have stopped dead just after the blow had fallen; he was as motionless as the carved columns that stood on either side of the fireplace. That blow was like some stroke of magic, for it cast the madness out of me. It cast the devils out. Something, some force of spirit outside of me or in me, something which held me up and urged me on was broken and was gone. Without it I felt very weak. My knees seemed giving way beneath me. And I was not the only one that blow served, or the only one who staggered beneath its impact.
Richard Parton was speaking, and his voice was quite weary and slow.
“Eliphalet,” he said, “you’re getting old. Who’d have thought anyone could come over you like that?”
Then there was another pause. There they stood, face to fa
