side, shouting congratulations, mumbling shamefaced apologies, manifesting combined emotions of shame, joy and exultation.
Henry was exultant and joyous too. This was something like. It was something as he had pictured it. Resent these people now—be churlish with them—that was not in Henry Harrington. It had never been. They had been duped—that was all—tools, as he had been a tool—victims, as he had been a victim. Besides, he had had yesterday the satisfaction of heaping coals of fire upon the heads of these people of Edgewater, who had treated him so outrageously; and it is a law of the heart to soften toward the enemy it succors.
Every manifestation of regret was balm to his bruises and it gratified him immensely when with an air of proprietorship his townspeople surrounded him. They seized his arms, they pulled at his hands, they got behind and pushed him, shouldered him toward the front door. "We've come to take you out, Henry." "We're a committee to take you out," they cried.
Henry reached the space between the front pillars riding on the shoulders of his delirious, repentant friends. The Greek porch of wide stone slabs and the long granite steps were crowded; the nearer courthouse yard was filling and the conical tents of the houseless began to look like dunce-caps of khaki, afloat in a sea of upturned faces. It appeared that all Edgewater had suddenly gravitated hither; for the news had broadcasted rapidly from the moment when loiterers upon the curb had noted the arrival of the well known Scanlon and the unknown Ulric, both in irons, and learned from the local officers the meaning of what they saw.
