Back in the center of the house, a foot scraped upon the floor, and there was J. Pinkney Hare standing out in the aisle, his little black bag stuffed with documents swinging in his hand. And then there arose, to the surprise of everybody (barring those good fellows who had been well paid for their work and were earnestly determined to earn it) a deafening roar of applause, starting in the rear of the house, taken up at certain definite points all through it, and gradually spreading almost everywhere, many people joining in because they liked Peter greatly and others without having any idea why. The roar subsided a little as Hare drew near to the stage, mounted it, and deposited his little bag upon the table. Then it broke again, more loudly, as he came forward a step, looking out upon the crowded house--he who could not hire a hall for himself--a little pale, a little awed by the bigness of his chance, but with neither tremor nor uncertainty on his small, cool face.... Hare spoke for an hour and a half, and not a soul left the hall. It was impossible to call him off or cry him down: the plain sentiment of the house was, "Give the little man his show." Afterwards, Chairman Bates had made a desperate effort to overcome the damning effect of that address, calling on various Ryanites of aggressive manners, and making a second speech himself, but with little avail. Even the free fight which broke out during the distribution of the ice-cream of the Neapolitans (the announcement of which addition to the regular _menu_ evoked the loudest spontaneous applause of the evening) resulted, until the police checked it, decidedly in favor of the strangers from New York. This part of the evening's pleasures Varney did not see. He rose with many others when the published tidings of refreshment gave notice that the speechmaking was over, and turned his face toward the door against a stream of ushers entering with alluring trays. Already all sense of the daring brilliance of Peter's stroke had faded and dropped from his mind. His own concerns crowded instantly upon his attention, and all his thought was of finding Mary Carstairs immediately and compelling her to recognize him for the man he was. She, too, had risen to leave the hall. While he listened to the fierce philippic of J. Pinkney Hare, Varney's eye had carefully marked her seat: it was empty now. Once, as he pushed his way slowly toward the door, he caught a brief glimpse of her over in the other aisle, some distance ahead of him; but he hardly saw her before she was lost to him again, swallowed up in the jostling throng. The theatre was in an uproar: all was noise and bustle and movement. And the wide lobby, when at length he reached it, was no better; it looked scarcely more promising to his quest than the traditional haystack to the searcher of needles.