And all eyes centered on the figure on the top step by the front doors. How marvelous was that voice as it reached the ears of the farthest listener, compelling absolute attention. And what a message from him, who as of old looked upon the multitude with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Even those who had come from mere curiosity, and those who already were beginning, like Jasper Carter, to hate and fear him. And to those who were indifferent and sunk in selfish ambition, to all of them he spoke with such commanding power that not a sound except his voice went over the people. Only the regular city sounds mingled now and then with the message he brought that day to the hearts of sinful, wayward, impure, greedy, and hopeless men and women in that mixed multitude.

And then Stanton, his tall form towering over nearly all around him, noted, with a look of anxious welfare for Virginia, as Jesus finished and calmly began to move down from where he had been standing, after gently asking the people to disperse, that the groups of men he had seen before the conference began to force their way up together towards Jesus. Cries arose.

The multitude that had been standing there so long and was now released from the strain and acting on nervous impulse, might do any one of a number of things such as mobs do.

Still Stanton, shielding Virginia as much as he could from those who were beginning to surge back and forth around her, noted the figure of Jesus slowly moving down from the steps into the crowd.

Then suddenly, right in front of him, a woman started up with a great cry that for a moment drew all attention to her. She was holding up a blind child, a little girl, and crying out, “Give her sight! Oh Jesus, open her eyes! It is not her fault!”

Stanton could not hear the rest. Great confusion surrounded the person of Jesus. He had put out his hands on the child’s head, as if in deep compassion. Had he opened her eyes? Stanton could not tell. He had a dim glimpse of Maxwell and other ministers struggling to get nearer Jesus and crying out to the people to keep from violence. Even at that moment of fast-growing turbulence, he was aware that dozens of press representatives were holding cameras up over their heads to get pictures.

And then he found all his strength and coolness were needed to protect Virginia and himself from serious harm, for the crowd had almost at once become an ungovernable mob. Men surged back and forth without knowing why. The unreasoning uproar and violence increased every moment. Groups of men fought with one another. When a man went down, others trampled on his body with reckless abandon. A spirit of mad frenzy swept over the throng.

Then Richard Stanton thanked God in his heart for an athlete’s strength. He had trained in the lumber camps of Michigan and Wisconsin and had developed iron sinews and muscles on board the mission fishing-boats of Labrador. And he needed every ounce of his splendid raw vitality now.