..
I expect that at that fatal word "Religion" the gentleman started as
though he had been stung by a snake, felt that this mild-looking man
was a dangerous lunatic and tried to move away. It was the lady with
him, so far as I can discover, who cried out:
"Oh, poor man, he's ill," and wanted at once to do something for him.
By this time a crowd was beginning to collect and as the crowd closed
around the central figures more people gathered upon the outskirts and,
peering through, wondered what had happened, whether there was an
accident, whether it were a "drunk," whether there had been a quarrel,
and so on.
Wilbraham, I fancy, began to address them all, telling them his great
news, begging them with desperate urgency to believe him. Some laughed,
some stared in wide-eyed wonder, the crowd was increasing and then, of
course, the inevitable policeman with his "move on, please," appeared.
How deeply I regret that Wilbraham was not, there and then, arrested.
He would be alive and with us now if that had been done. But the
policeman hesitated, I suppose, to arrest any one as obviously a
gentleman as Wilbraham, a man, too, as he soon perceived, who was
perfectly sober, even though he was not in his right mind.
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