Apparently something was expected of Mr. Harwood of Marion.  Thatcher had left his seat and was moving toward the corridors to find his lieutenants.  Half a dozen men accosted him as he moved through the aisle, but he shook them off angrily.  An effort to start another demonstration in his honor was not wholly fruitless.  It resulted at least in a good deal of confusion of which the chair was briefly tolerant; then he resumed his pounding, while Harwood stood stubbornly on his chair.

The Tallest Delegate, known to be a recent convert to Thatcher, was thoroughly aroused, and advanced toward the platform shouting; but the chairman leveled his gavel at him and bade him sit down.  The moment was critical; the veriest tyro felt the storm-spirit brooding over the hall.

The voice of the chairman was now audible.

“The chair recognizes the delegate from Marion.”

“Out of order!  What’s his name!” howled many voices.

The chairman graciously availed himself of the opportunity to announce the name of the gentleman he had recognized.

“Mr. Harwood, of Marion, has the floor.  The convention will be in order.  The gentleman will proceed.”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order.”

Dan’s voice rose sonorously; the convention was relieved to find that the gentleman in blue serge could be heard; he was audible even to Mr. Thatcher’s excited counsellors in the corridors.

“The delegate will kindly state his point of order.”

The chairman was quietly courteous.  His right hand rested on his gavel, he thrust his left into the side pocket of his long alpaca coat.  He was an old and tried hand in the chair, and his own deep absorption in the remarks of Mr. Harwood communicated itself to the delegates.

Dan uttered rapidly the speech he had committed to memory for this occasion a week earlier.  Every sentence had been carefully pondered; both Bassett and Atwill had blue penciled it until it expressed concisely and pointedly exactly what Bassett wished to be said at this point in the convention’s proceedings.  Interruptions, of applause or derision, were to be reckoned with; but the speaker did not once drop his voice or pause long enough for any one to drive in a wedge of protest.  He might have been swamped by an uprising of the whole convention, but strange to say the convention was intent upon hearing him.  Once the horde of candidates and distinguished visitors on the platform had been won to attention, Harwood turned slowly until he faced the greater crowd behind him.  Several times he lifted his right hand and struck out with it, shaking his head with the vigor of his utterance.  ("His voice,” said the “Advertiser’s” report, “rumbles and bangs like a bowling-alley on Saturday night.  There was a big bump every time a sentence rumbled down the hall and struck the rear wall of the building.”)