"Oh, yes, I know, and I thank you. But you're evading my question, Carley. What is the other insinuation? I quite understand that you shrink from mentioning it, but you must. I have a right to demand that much from a friendship so loyal as yours has proved itself to be. Go on. Tell me the worst."
"I will. But the thing has been so subtilely put forth that I've found it impossible even to find anybody who has asked the question. Indeed everybody who has helped to circulate the slander has done so not by asking if there was truth in it but by declaring his utter disbelief in it. I never knew anything so cleverly managed in my life, or anything so malignant."
"You haven't yet told me what the scandal was," said Boyd, with lips so tightly compressed that the purple had all gone out of them.
"In substance it amounted to this, that you had in some way treated Colonel Conway's daughter with unchivalrous disrespect—that you had put some unforgivable slight upon her—nobody suggests what. In fact the thing is so vague and shadowy and unsubstantial that it is difficult even to define it. But Colonel Conway's refusal to join with us in nominating you has lent a sort of color to it, and this thing, utterly unsubstantial as it is, has done more than all else to embarrass our campaign. In your absence it has been impossible to meet it and throttle it, for nobody but you could have a shadow of authority to question Colonel Conway on such a subject."
"I understand," answered Boyd; "I'll deal with that matter in a way that will satisfy myself at any rate, and possibly my friends also. Thank you for all. I know the situation now, and knowing it, I think I know how to meet it."
As he said this the pair were entering the Court House village, and their road took them within a few feet of the house and law office of Sam Butler, the Democratic candidate for Senator. As they passed, Butler stepped out into the porch accompanied by Edgar Coffey, and engaged in the earnest end of a conversation. They could not avoid hearing Coffey say:
"Well, that's what Judy tole me to tell you, an' ef you do as she says, she'll take keer o' the rest."
Neither Westover nor Farnsworth said a word until they had passed well beyond hearing. Then Westover exclaimed:
"I wonder what on earth that means! Surely Judy Peters isn't going to throw the mountain vote for him."
"Very certainly not," answered Farnsworth, but he said nothing of his visit to the Queen of the Mountains or of her initiative in Boyd Westover's nomination.