Tom set out for Potomac Hall Wednesday evening with the emotions of a gambler who had placed his fortune on a single color; his all was risked on the event of that night. However, he had a bracing confidence running through his agitation; he felt that he controlled the arrow of fortune. The man to man canvass; the feminine influence made operative by Mrs. Barry; the letters with which Ruth had helped him,—these, he was certain, had drawn the arrow's head to the spot where rested his stake and the union's.
Tom reached the hall at six-thirty. The polls did not open till seven, but already thirty or forty of Foley's men stood in knots in front of the building.
"Hello, boys! Now don't he think he's It!" said one admiringly.
"Poor Buck! This's the last o' him!" groaned another.
There was a burst of derisive laughter, and each of the party tossed a bit of language in his way; but Tom made no answer and passed them unflinchingly. At the doorway he was stopped by the policeman who was regularly stationed at Potomac Hall on meeting nights.
"Goin' to have a fist sociable to-night?" the policeman asked, anxiously watching the men in the street.
"Can't say, Murphy. Ask Foley. He'll be floor manager, if there is one."
As he went through the hallway toward the stairs, Tom paused to glance through a side door into the big bar-room, which, with a café, occupied the whole of the first floor. A couple of score of Foley men stood at the bar and sat about the tables. It certainly did look as if there might be festivities.
Tom mounted the broad stairway and knocked at the door of the union's hall. Hogan, the sergeant-at-arms, a Foley man, gingerly admitted him. The hall in which he found himself was a big rectangular room, perhaps fifty by one hundred feet. The walls had once been maroon in color, and had a broad moulding of plaster that had been white and gilt; the ceiling had likewise once been maroon, and was decorated with plaster scroll-work and crudely painted clusters of fruits and flowers—scroll-work and paintings lacking their one-time freshness. From the center of the ceiling hung a great ball of paper roses; at the front of the room was a grand piano in a faded green cover. The sign advertising the hall, nailed on the building's front, had as its last clause: "Also available for weddings, receptions, and balls."