His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic, but they were not
steady and speculative like Warlock's or glowing and distant like
Aunt Anne's, but rather angry and restless and pugnacious; they were
the eyes of a madman, but of a madman who can yet calculate upon and
arrange his position in the world. He was mad for his own purposes,
and could, for these same purposes, bind his madness to its proper
bounds.
He seemed to Maggie at first rather pathetic with his little twisted
body and his large round head. Very soon it was emotions quite other
than pity that she was feeling. She saw at once that he was a
practised preacher, and she who had, with the exception of Mr.
Warlock, never heard a fine preacher, was at once under the sway of
one of the ablest and most dramatic orators of his time. His voice
was sweet and clear, and seemed strange enough coming from that ugly
and malevolent countenance. Only the head and the grasping hands
could be seen, but sometimes the invisible body was driven with such
force against the desk that it seemed that it must fling the thing
over, down into the congregation.
"My brothers and sisters," he began, "I have come to-night to give
you a warning, and this warning is given to you not as the
expression of a personal opinion but as the declaration of an
assumed fact.
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