“Piatt?”
“Sprague, fifteen.”
“Polk?”
Pusey arose.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said in his weak voice. Delegates near him looked up, Randolph crouched like a lynx, then rose on bent knees, with an alert inquiry in his eyes.
“On behalf of the delegation from Polk County,” Pusey continued, “I cast the solid forty-five votes for Jerome B. Garwood.”
Hale, leaning listlessly on an elbow, his head in his hand, gazing away like an abstracted schoolboy through the open windows as if the woods and fields beckoned him from irksome routine tasks, had been calling the roll from memory, and keeping no tally, for he knew the formula perfectly by this time. But he looked up, startled. Rankin tilted back in his chair, let it come down suddenly, its legs striking the floor with a bang; his jaw fell. Knowlton sprang to his feet, his face written all over with surprise, and Randolph, his eyes ablaze, quickly straightening his legs and raising himself on his toes broke the startled stillness by crying excitedly:
“Mr. Chairman!”
There was a scraping of chairs, a hum of voices, that ascended immediately to a roar, and then a score of men began to shout crazily:
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”