The crowd on Girard Avenue had been waiting for over an hour for some sign of a stir, when a sudden blare of brass instruments and a thundering drubbing of drums broke forth, and into the avenue wheeled the Emmet Band, Eddie Brennen at its head, splendid in a scarlet coat and towering shako, his drum-major’s staff whirling about his head like a metallic circle. Hogan, the policeman, darted into the street with uplifted club, to hold back the teams from the cross streets. The throng ranged quickly along the curb; from the adjacent alleys poured a horde of whooping children; draymen pulled up their nags in order to watch the passing cohorts. Everyone knew that the gathering of the clans had begun. It was the anti-Kelly faction, and they swung along behind the drums like veterans. Those of them who were to sit in the convention wore huge scarlet badges upon their breasts. Larry Murphy, in all the glory of a high silk hat, borrowed from one of McGrath’s hack drivers, marched at the head of the column, and his aids, Nolan and Ferguson, were immediately behind him. “Be me soul!” ejaculated the grocer, “bud young Brennen kin twirl his bit av a stick, so he kin. An’ luk at the walk av Murphy; sure yez’ed t’ink he had a mortgage on the City Hall!” “It puts me in mind,” remarked Tim Burns; “av the owld days whin we stepped till the music oursilves, Clancy, on Paddy’s day, beyant on Broad Street.” “True for ye, Tim, an’ we wid the axes on the shoulders av uz, an’ the bokays, an’ the strings av doughnuts till ate on the march. Faith an’ the young fellys know nawthin’ av the harp an’ the sunburst; an’ it’s withered in the hearts av most av the owld wans too, I’m thinkin’. God luk down on uz! Till think av all the talk there wur av the owld land, then, an’ the little we hear av it now. Divil a green flag d’yez see hangin’ out av the windys on the siventeenth av March; an’ the Land League do be forgotten. The owld blood’s growin’ thin, Tim--thin as water!” About the doors of the convention hall, the same hall where the Aurora Borealis Club had held their ball, the scene was one of extreme animation. The groups of high-hatted, tobacco-chewing men, seemed possessed by demons of movement and noise. They laughed with the full strength of their chests, waved their arms wildly and swore joyously, with the unconscious finish of experts. Kelly and his henchmen had already arrived; he had been greeted as a hero by his own faction and now stood in the hallway surrounded by a solid circle of supporters. Gratten Haley who had been named for school director the night before in a convention held in a back kitchen on Second Street, approached Owen Dwyer. “Has McQuirk got here yet?” asked Haley. “I haven’t seen him. Sure, Gratten, it’s not at a side issue like this he’d be, whin there’s McAteer’s nomination for Congress till be looked after.”