Tom strode back to his table, brought the gavel down with a blow that broke its handle and looked about with blazing eyes. Again the union waited his action in suspense. His chest heaved; he swallowed mightily. Then he asked steadily: "Are you ready for the question?" This is but one sample of the many annoyances Tom suffered during the meeting, and of the annoyances he was to suffer for many meetings to come. A man less obstinately strong would have yielded his resignation within an hour--to force which was half the purpose of the harassment; and a man more violent would have broken into a fury of words, which, answering the other half of the purpose, would have been to Foley's crew what the tirade of a beggar is to teasing schoolboys. When "new business" was reached Tom yielded the chair to Brown, the vice-president, and rose to make the protest on which he had determined. He had no great hope of winning the union to the action he desired; but it had become a part of his nature never to give up and to try every chance. The union knew what was coming. There were cheers and hisses, but Tom stood waiting minute after minute till both had died away. "Mr. Chairman, I move we set aside last week's election of walking delegate," he began, and went on to make his charges against Foley. Cries of "Good boy, Tom!" "Right there!" came from his friends, and various and variously decorated synonyms for liar came from Foley's crowd; but Tom, raising his voice to a shout, spoke without pause through the cries of friends and foes. When he ended half the crowd was on foot demanding the right to the floor. Brown dutifully recognized Foley. Foley did not speak from where he stood in the front row, but sauntered angularly, hands in trousers pockets, to the platform and mounted it. With a couple of kicks he sent a chair from its place against the wall to the platform's edge, leisurely swung his right foot upon the chair's seat, rested his right elbow upon his knee, and with cigar in the left corner of his mouth, and his side to his audience, he began to speak. "When I was a kid about as big as a rivet I used to play marbles for keeps," he drawled, looking at the side wall. "When I won, I didn't make no kick. When I lost, a deaf man could 'a' heard me a mile. I said the other kid didn't play fair, an' I went cryin' around to make him give 'em up."