And now he was on the platform, borne there above the shoulders of a hundred men. He was standing pale and straight and mighty. He stretched out his hand, so large and strong, and somehow as honest as his eyes; the tempest stilled. He was speaking--what did he say? She hardly heard, though she knew that it was of and for right and justice--what else could that voice utter or the brain behind those proud features think? With her, and with all there, far more than his words it was his voice, like music, like magic, rising and falling in thrilling inflections as it wove its spell of gold and fire. Whenever he paused there would be an instant of applause--a huge, hoarse thunder, the call of that mysterious and awful and splendid soul of the mass--an instant full of that one great, deep, throbbing note, then silence to hear him again. Scarborough had measured his task--to lift that convention from the slough of sordidness to which the wiles and bribes of Dumont and his clique had lured it; to set it in the highroad of what he believed with all his intensity to be the high-road of right. Usually he spoke with feeling strongly repressed; but he knew that if he was to win that day against such odds he must take those delegates by surprise and by storm, must win in a suddenly descended whirlwind of passion that would engulf calculation and craft, sordidness and cynicism. He made few gestures; he did not move from the position he had first taken. He staked all upon his voice; into it he poured all his energy, all his fire, all his white-hot passion for right and justice, all his scorn of the base and the low. "Head above heart, when head is right," he had often said. "But when head is wrong, then heart above head." And he reached for hearts that day. Five minutes, and delegates and spectators were his captives. Fifteen minutes, and he was riding a storm such as comes only when the fountains of the human deeps are broken up. Thirty minutes and he was riding it as its master, was guiding it where he willed. In vain Larkin sought to rally delegates round the shamed but steadfast nucleus of the bribed and the bossed. In vain his orator moved an adjournment until "calmness and reason shall be restored." The answer made him shrink and sink into his seat. For it was an awful, deafening roll of the war-drums of that exalted passion which Scarborough had roused. The call of counties began. The third on the list--Bartholomew--was the first to say what the people longed to hear. A giant farmer, fiery and freckled, rose and in a voice like a blast from a bass horn bellowed: "Bartholomew casts her solid vote for Hampden Scarborough!"