“Yes and more!  I told him he was clean plumb fool-crazy!  Why, Eleanor, when that fellow was fired out of his job yesterday morning, he hadn’t ten dollars ahead in the world!  I’m not a bank, myself; but then I haven’t a wife and kiddies.  Do you know, Eleanor, that fellow had more pluck than I would have had under the same circumstances?  I couldn’t let the results of this kind of a fight come down on a woman.”

“What did he say when you told him he was crazy?”

“Oh, went locoed clean out of his head, kicked my hat off the bed post, took out a fiver, said, ’Wayland, that’s my last!  I’ll bet it a hundred odd you do the very thing I’m outlining tonight.’”

“It was a safe bet,” said Eleanor.  “He had come to see me before he went to you!  I was the person, who told him you had a friend, who would put up the money.  I didn’t tell him who the friend was; for it happens to be myself.  No:  you needn’t blow up, Dick; or drop dead of apoplexy!  He didn’t come to tell me, or ask a woman’s money!  He had come hunting you; and I pumped it out of him.  He’s a brick not to mention my name to you.  I like that in a man; and I am going to do it, Dick; and you needn’t blow up with rage!  You can swear if it would relieve pressure; but I am going to do it!  I am going to do it at once!  Don’t you see what a cowardly foolish thing it would be of you to give up and slink into a hole just because you’re defeated?  It’s just what you said would happen that night on the Ridge.  Don’t you remember, you said it was bound to be a losing fight; and I said it didn’t matter a bit if a man were crucified long as the cause won out?  Well, you sent me the note saying you had set out on the Trail and would never quit till you got the Man Higher Up.  How are you going to get the Man Higher Up if you don’t go right after him in the House and the Senate?  They’ve crucified you; and it’s going to be the making of you.  Men don’t destroy an opponent unless they fear him!  If he’s a fool, they give him rope enough to hang himself; but if they fear him, they slander him and blacken him and misrepresent him and try to destroy him!  Well, they’ve done all that to you and tried to destroy you; and instead of destroying you, they’ve only made the people call on you for a leader!  Don’t you see what a cowardly thing it would be to slink away now because you are defeated?  Why, that’s the very time a man can’t afford to quit, and still call himself a man.  No, don’t try to stop me!  I lay awake all last night thinking it out!  They’ll not have a chance to call you a woman-made man!  I’ll place a certain amount with my lawyer for Mr. Williams.  You know my father always helped the Mission School more or less; and a woman is supposed to be soft on Missions.  Mr. Williams will loan it to the news editor.  Only, I may as well tell you, Dick, you are not going to be allowed to stop now!  You wrote me that a person couldn’t stab certain things to life and then expect them to lie quiet as if nothing had happened.  That cuts both ways.  Men are pretty good egotists; but I wonder if you ever thought what that means with me, with the people you have prodded up to resent the Ring in the Valley here.  Do you know Dick, if you would quit now, I’d despise myself for ever having loved you.”