The onlookers were silent for a few moments. Then there was a chorus of
jeering approbation.
When the shamed, humiliated, agonized radical--thus made a mark for gibes
instead of winning honor as a martyr for the cause--began to wail and
plead the men who were nearest the scene of flagellation started to laugh.
The laughter spread like a fire through dry brambles. It ran crackling
from side to side of the great square. It mounted into higher bursts of
merriment. It became hilarity that was expended by a swelling roar that
split wide the night silence and came beating back in riotous echoes from
the fa?ade of the State House. That amazing method of handling anarchy had
snapped the tense strain of a situation which had been holding men's
emotions in leash for hours. The ludicrousness of the thing was heightened
by the nervous solemnity immediately preceding. Men beat their neighbors
on the back in instant comradeship of convulsed, rollicking jubilation.
"Always leave 'em laughing when you say good-by!" Morrison advised the
chap whom he was manhandling. He held the fellow over the edge of the
plinth by the collar and dropped him, wilted and whimpering, into the
waiting arms of the appreciative Lanigan.
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