erhood."

That was all. The room rang with cheers. Tom Mortlake resumed his seat.
To Wimp the man's audacity verged on the Sublime; to Denzil on the
Beautiful. Again there was a breathless hush. Mr. Gladstone's mobile
face was working with excitement. No such extraordinary scene had
occurred in the whole of his extraordinary experience. He seemed about
to rise. The cheering subsided to a painful stillness. Wimp cut the
situation by laying his hand again upon Tom's shoulder.

"Come quietly with me," he said. The words were almost a whisper, but in
the supreme silence they traveled to the ends of the hall.

"Don't you go, Tom!" The trumpet tones were Peter's. The call thrilled
an answering chord of defiance in every breast, and a low, ominous
murmur swept through the hall.

Tom rose, and there was silence again. "Boys," he said, "let me go.
Don't make any noise about it. I shall be with you again to-morrow."

But the blood of the Break o' Day boys was at fever heat. A hurtling
mass of men struggled confusedly from their seats. In a moment all was
chaos. Tom did not move. Half-a-dozen men, headed by Peter, scaled the
platform. Wimp was thrown to one side, and the invaders formed a ring
round Tom's chair. The platform people scampered like mice from the
center. Some huddled together in the corners, others slipped out at the
rear. The committee congratulated themselves on having had the
self-denial to exclude ladies. Mr. Gladstone's satellites hurried the
old man off and into his carriage; though the fight promised to become
Homeric. Grodman stood at the side of the platform secretly more amused
than ever, concerning himself no more with Denzil Cantercot, who was
already strengthening his nerves at the bar upstairs. The police about
the hall blew their whistles, and policemen came rushing in from outside
and the neighborhood. An Irish M. P. on the platform was waving his
gingham like a shillalah in sheer excitement, forgetting his new-found
respectability and dreaming himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a
conscientious constable floored with a truncheon. But a shower of fists
fell on the zealot's face, and he tottered back bleeding. Then the storm
broke in all its fury. The upper air was black with staves, sticks, and
umbrellas, mingled with the pallid hailstones of knobby fists. Yells and
groans and hoots and battle-cries blent in grotesque chorus, like one of
Dvorak's weird diabolical movements. Mortlake stood impassi