Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/272

 There was a feeling in the crowd that the joke was on Tillotson.

"I wonder how many of you have told your pasts to Tinkersfield! How many of you have made Tillotson your father confessor?

"As for me"—her head was high—"I sell sandwiches. I am very busy. I hardly have time to think. But when I do think it is of something besides village gossip."

She grew suddenly earnest; leaned down to them. "You haven't time to think of it either," she told them; "have you, men of Tinkersfield?"

Her appeal was direct, and the answer came back to her in a roar from the men who knew courage when they saw it; who knew, indeed, innocence!

"No!"

And it was that "No" which beat Tillotson.

"The way she put it over," Atwood exulted afterward, "to a packed crowd like this!"

"The thing about Jane"—Henry was very seriously trying to say the thing as he saw it—"the thing about Jane is that she sees things straight. And she makes other people see."

Well, Tillotson was beaten, and the men who supported O-liver came out of the fight feeling as if they had killed something unclean. 266