“Jared Whitefield.”
He nodded, almost as if he had known it from the beginning. It irritated her.
“You’re not surprised at all,” she said sharply.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it would have required colossal stupidity to choose any other man—and you are not stupid.”
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.”