stage and
haul Tim down off it. Toward him Tim stepped, leaning over the edge of
the stage so that the belligerent one would not miss a syllable.

"I'll tell how I came to be a Republican. When I landed in this country
and before I was fairly out of Castle Garden some thief of a pickpocket
or worse stole the few little dollars I had to keep me until I could get
a job. I was a seventeen-year-old boy, and that shy I couldn't beg. For
two days not a morsel of food went into my mouth. And there I was,
jumping sideways with the hunger, when a man comes along and saw me and
brought me into a grand restaurant, 'And how'll I ever pay you?' I asks
when I'd eaten my fill. He was a butcherman, with a white smock on him.
And he laughs and says: 'You can't now; but by and by, when you get a
vote, be sure and vote the Republican ticket.' And I says: 'Why the
Republican ticket?' And he says: 'Oh, just by way o' variety--just to
show that you people don't all go one way.'

"And"--Tim straightened up--"I took his hand, and 'Sir, I will!' I said.
He was joking, maybe; but I wasn't. And I did vote the Republican
ticket; and I'm still voting the Republican ticket. And I'm saying to
you all to-night--the one Republican among five hundred of ye--that I'm
not apologizing to any man in this hall or any other hall for it. And
I'm saying to you"--in the face of the inquiring man in the front row,
in the face of Buck Malone, in the face of the whole hall, Tim clinched
his fist--"I'm saying that the man of Irish blood who ever forgets the
promise that he's made to the one that befriended him--I say to ye all,
and I don't care whether ye like it or not--his blood's been crossed
somewhere; he's no Irish in him! No--nor fit to be called a man at all!"

Tim stepped back to pour out a glass of water; a form rose up midway of
the hall, and a voice roared out:

"Say, you Riley man, your politics are the divil's own, but you're Irish
all right. Go on!"

Tim held the glass toward the speaker.

"And, ma bouchal, 'tis you has the Irish heart in you, too. Here's to
you! You stubborn, unconverted, hereditary Democrat, here's to you!" He
drained the glass.

"Go on! Tell us more!"

"Yes; go on--talk up!"

"You'll get a show here. Go on!"

Tim glanced down at Buck Malone, swept the benches for the sight of a
more cheerful face and caught the friendly eyes of Peter Kearney. Also
he suddenly recognized the face of Malone's henchman--the man to whom he