Jim Rankin was the most popular man in Grand Prairie; men loved to boast for him that he had more friends than any three men in Polk County, and the sympathy that came for Garwood out of a natural reaction from so much abuse, was increased to sworn fealty when Rankin was made the target for Pusey's poisoned shafts. When the story first appeared the men of Grand Prairie had gossiped about it with the smiling toleration men have for such things, but now it was a common thing to hear them declare that they would vote for Garwood just to show Free Pusey that his opinions did not go for much in that community. Emily Harkness did not leave the house for days. She felt that she could not bear to go down town, where every one would see her; and there was nowhere else to go, save out into the country, and there no one who lives in the country ever thinks of going unless he has to go. She had entrenched herself behind the idea that the story was untrue, and she daily fortified this position as her only possible defense from despair, seeking escape from her reflections when they became too aggressive by adding to her interest in Garwood's campaign. She knew how much his election meant to him in every way, and though she preferred to dissociate herself from the idea of its effect on her own destiny, she quickly went to the politician's standpoint of viewing it now as a necessary vindication, as if its result by the divine force of a popular majority could disprove the assertions of Garwood's little enemy. Emily read all the papers breathlessly dreading a repetition of the story, but her heart grew lighter as she found no further reference to it. She had ordered the boy to stop delivering the _News_, and she enjoyed a woman's sense of revenge in this action, believing that it would in some way cripple Pusey's fortunes. She resolved, too, that her friends should cease to take the sheet, but she could not bring herself to make the first active step in this crusade. Meanwhile, she had watched for an indignant denial from Garwood himself, and she thought it strange that none appeared. But finally, striving to recall all she knew of men's strange notions of honor, and slowly marking out a course proper for one in Garwood's situation to pursue, she came to the belief that he was right in not dignifying the attack by his notice. She derived a deeper satisfaction when the thought burst upon her one day, making her clasp her hands and lift them to her chin with a gasp of joy such as she had not known for days, that the same high notion had kept him from writing to her, though her conception of a lover's duty in correspondence was the common one, that is, that he should write, if only a line, every day. But Garwood was busy, she knew, with his speaking engagements in Tazewell and Mason Counties, and she tried faithfully to follow him on the little itinerary he had drawn up for her, awaiting his coming home in the calm faith that he would set it all aright.