The strain was over, the long pent-up emotions of the seventy men who had stood solidly for Jerry Garwood, and now had won victory at last, broke forth, and they flung their hats into the air, tore off their coats to wave aloft, brandished chairs, and pounded one another on the back, yelling all the time. The followers of Sprague yelled no less excitedly, though their rage was that of defeat. Randolph strode to where Hale was sitting, his mouth stretched wide in a demented yell, and pounded the table with his fist, crying unceasingly:
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”
The Singed Cat stood leaning as he had leaned for days, with his eyes upon the desk he had scarred with his gavel. For ten minutes, and it seemed an hour, the men howled, until exhausted by the exertion and the excitement, their voices failed, and they collapsed into their chairs. But Randolph, in the approximate order which the exhaustion brought about, continued to cry, until at last the Singed Cat’s voice pierced to all the corners of the court house.
“The convention—will be—in order! The convention—has not—yet adjourned. There is—still—work—to be done.”
But Randolph continued to cry.
“Gentlemen—will resume—their seats,” Bailey said, “before—they can—be recognized.”
Randolph hesitated, though still he cried:
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”
But Bailey’s eye forced him backward to his place, and when he had retreated to the midst of the Moultrie County delegation the chairman said:
“The gentleman—from Moultrie.”