Three-quarters of an hour later, the inhabitants of the Cross-Roads,
saved, they knew not how; guilty; knowing nothing of the fantastic
pendulum of opinion, which, swung by the events of the day, had marked the
fatal moment of guilt, now on others, now on them, who deserved it--these
natives and refugees, conscious of atrocity, dumfounded by a miracle,
thinking the world gone mad, hovered together in a dark, ragged mass at
the crossing corners, while the skeleton of the rotting buggy in the
slough rose behind them against the face of the west. They peered with
stupified eyes through the smoky twilight.
From afar, faintly through the gloaming, came mournfully to their ears the
many-voiced refrain--fainter, fainter:
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground.
John Brown's body lies--mould--
. . . . . we go march . . . . on."