She looked at Evan with curiosity, and he sustained her gaze. He was changed. She saw that he had been changing through the days and weeks, gradually, but now he seemed to have made some great stride and reached a destination. He did not look the same. His face was no longer the face of an egoistic pedant. It was not alone the laying aside of his great, round spectacles. The thing lay rather in his expression and in his bearing. He seemed more human. He seemed larger.... She was embarrassed. “The petition,” she said. “I must have that.” “Signatures would be easy to get. There are a hundred men who would sign any petition with Jared Whitefield’s name on it. Men of standing. But to approach one man who would go to Abner Fownes with the story--well----” he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t suppose one man in a hundred realizes what is going on under the surface in Gibeon.” “We must take the risk.” “I’ll prepare the petitions and have Tubal print them--at once.” She sat down at her desk and wrote a moment, then got up and walked with steady steps into the composing room. Evan Pell stood looking after her with a queer expression; it was a look of loneliness, of yearning, of self-distrust, of humility. He was thinking about Evan Pell and of what a failure he had made in the handling of his life. He was considering how little he knew, he who had fancied himself of the wisest. He weighed the value of book knowledge against the value of heart knowledge, and found himself poverty-stricken.... It seemed so hopeless now to turn himself into the sort of man he wanted to be; the sort of man he had come to comprehend it was worth his while to be. “I never would have found it out,” he said to himself, “if I had not loved her.” The door opened stealthily and a barefoot urchin entered whose clothing consisted of trousers many sizes too large and a shirt so dirty and torn as not to resemble a garment at all. He glared at Evan and snarled: “Where’s she?” “Where’s who?” said Pell. “The editin’ woman.” “What do you want of her?” “None of your business.... Hey, leggo of me, damn you! I’ll bite ye! Leggo!” Pell had the child by the nape of the neck and held him so he could not escape. He noticed a paper crumpled in one grimy hand and forced the fingers open. It fell to the floor, and as he reached for it the boy wriggled free and darted out to the sidewalk, where he grimaced horribly and twiddled his fingers at his nose. “Ya-aaa-ah!” he squealed, and fled down the street. Pell smoothed out the paper and read, in cramped, printed letters. They hain’t treated me square and I’m getting even. They’re fetching it in to-night. Truckloads. You can git evidence at the Lakeside. Eleven o’clock.