But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!
He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a man; he had never tasted the stuff.
Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else--he knew that he was drunk--and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told himself, and he was only a woodsman; the hellions of the world were not allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning faces around him!
Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was "the Latisan lallyloo"! It had echoed among the hills in the old days when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.
The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of despair!
Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove down his cap.
The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out of the station; a succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned prospective passengers.
Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of the passenger car, he shook his fists at assembled Adonia and yelled again.
Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had thrown away.
She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant proprietorship.
"How come?" sneered Brophy. "Latest bulletin seemed to be that the engagement was broke!" He was suddenly hostile.
She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was triumphant. "It's understood that I get the credit for this job," he informed her, _sotto voce_. His air suggested that he was convinced that the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.
All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan--the breaking of her grandfather's last prop. She had intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault, involuntary though that fault was.