the words are eyes, lips,
hands, head, body, and the immeasurable force of personality. Tim's
voice softened and deepened, halted and quickened, rounded and trembled;
the ruddy cheek took on a ruddier color; his deep-set eyes grew deeper
and darker, and by and by they flamed. He grew taller; his body
expanded. He spread his hands--fine, shapely hands, with nervous,
expressive fingers--and as he gestured he quivered to his very
finger-tips, and down there on the benches they quivered with him. The
cold words--he warmed and revivified them. Under the caress of his
beautiful, barely perceptible brogue the commonest, harshest lines took
on smoothness and roundness; and from out his mouth the fine, tender
words bloomed like summer flowers; and the larger, colorful words
flashed like gems.

Tim, in short, was an orator. And when he said: "There, gentlemen, you
have the story--and you know whose story it is. Poor old Nanna
Nolan's--yes:" when he had said that, with arms and hands no longer
gesturing, but drooping straight and motionless by his side, no one
stirred--but a great sigh went up.

And not till that moment did Malone wake up to it that he had waited too
long; but that moment he desperately chose to take his position at the
end of the aisle and face his hitherto unbroken constituency; and while
Malone was doing that Tim was motioning to Dinnie in the wings; and now
Dinnie was leading her out--old Nanna Nolan, halting and bewildered,
blinking at the audience--as Tim held up one hand for a last word.

"Here she is! I've tried to tell you her story, gentlemen; but there's
only one living person can tell that story right, and I'm not that one.
If you could have heard her telling it--she in her little cabin on that
windy hillside, before her little stove, with the dark coming down and
the lights beginning to shine through----"

And that instant, while Tim's arm was across her poor thin shoulders,
covered as ever with the worn man's coat--that instant Malone, whose
back was to the stage, chose to raise his fateful forefinger.

And Tim waited. And Malone waited.

[Illustration: "That two-faced chairman of yours--he never tipped me off
you could fight any way except with your hands."]

Not a man left the hall.

Malone turned and faced Tim.

"You win," he said; "but that two-faced chairman of yours--and he ain't
any friend of yours--he never tipped me off you could fight any way
except with your hands. Speak the re