Luckily for Pembroke, he could plunge into the heat of his canvass. After he had lost Olivia, the conviction of her value came to him with overpowering force. There was no girl like her. She did not protest and talk about her emotions and analyze them as some women did--Madame Koller, for example--but Pembroke knew there was “more to her,” as Cave said, “than a dozen Eliza Peytons.” Perhaps Cave suspected something, but Pembroke knew he had nothing to fear from his friend’s manly reticence. But to have lost Olivia Berkeley! Pembroke sometimes wondered at himself--at the way in which this loss grew upon him, instead of diminishing with time, as the case usually is with disappointments. Yet all this time he was riding from place to place, speaking, corresponding, as eager to win his election as if he were the happiest of accepted lovers--more so, in fact. And then, there was that Ahlberg affair to trouble him. Like all the men of his race and generation, he firmly believed there were some cases in which blood must be shed--but a roadside quarrel, in which nothing but personal dislike figured, did not come under that head. Pembroke was fully alive to the folly and wickedness of fighting Ahlberg under the circumstances--but it was now impossible for him to recede. He could only hope and pray that something would turn up to prevent a meeting so indefinitely fixed. But if Ahlberg’s going away were the only thing to count upon, that seemed far enough out of the question, for he stayed on and on at the village tavern, playing cards with young Hibbs and one or two frequenters of the place, riding over to play Madame Koller’s accompaniments, fishing for invitations to dine at Isleham--in short, doing everything that a man of his nature and education could do to kill time. Pembroke could not but think that Ahlberg’s persistence could only mean that he was really and truly waiting for his revenge. So there were a good many things to trouble the “white man’s candidate,” who was to make such a thorough and brilliant canvass, and whose readiness, cheerfulness and indomitable spirit was everywhere remarked upon. One night, as Pembroke was riding home after a hard day’s work in the upper part of the county, and was just entering the long straggling village street, his horse began to limp painfully. Pembroke dismounted, and found his trusty sorrel had cast a shoe,--a nail had entered his foot, and there was a job for the blacksmith. He led the horse to the blacksmith’s shop, which was still open, although it was past seven o’clock, and on the promise of having the damage repaired in half an hour, walked over to the village tavern.