"It's a lie!" she gasped. "It's a lie--a lie! They said he couldn't win anyway; they said he had sold--sold his chance to win--and they lie! He's never been whipped. He's never--been--whipped--yet!" It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad rise and fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiet her he hardly reckoned what he was saying. "Why, it--it don't mean nothin'," he stated mildly. "That newspaper trash ain't no account, anyway you look at it." "Then why do they print it?" she stormed. "How do they dare to print it? They've been doing it for days--weeks!" He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his brain. "They hev to, I reckon," he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. "If they didn't maybe everybody'd be so sure he'd win that they wouldn't even bother to go to see it." And then, very carelessly, as though it was of little importance: "Don't know's I would hev thought of goin' myself if it hadn't been for that. It's advertisin' I reckon--just advertisin'!" Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She even started toward him. "Wouldn't have thought of it!" she repeated. "Why--why, you don't mean that you _aren't_ going?" It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility of such a contingency. Old Jerry's mouth dropped open while he stared at her. "Go," he stammered, "me go! Why, it's goin' to happen tomorrow night!" She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment. "You'll have to leave on the early train," she agreed, "and--and so I won't see you again." She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched hand. "I've been waiting for you to come tonight," she went on, "and it was hard waiting. That's why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will you--will you give him this for me--give it to him when he has won? You won't have to say anything." She hesitated. "I--I think he'll understand!" Old Jerry reached out and took it from her--a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain raced madly. "Of course I figured on goin'," he said, when his breath returned, "but I been a little undecided--jest a trifle! But I ought to be there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn't somebody from home. And I'll give it to him then--I'll give it to him when he's won!" He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy.