up to save the day. It was all very well for Big
Tim to file a libel suit. The mind of the public was made up.

The mass meeting at the State House drew an enormous crowd, one so great
that overflow meetings had to be held. Every corridor in the building
was full of excited jostling people. They poured into the gallery of
the Senate room and packed the rear of the floor itself. Against such
a demonstration the upper house did not dare pass the Garman bill
immediately. It was held over for a few days to give the public emotion
a chance to die. Instead, the resentment against machine and corporate
domination grew more bitter. Stinging resolutions from the back counties
were wired to members who had backslidden. Committees of prominent
citizens from up state and across the mountains arrived at Verden for
heart-to-heart talks with the assemblymen from their districts.

At a hurried meeting of the managers of the public utilities companies
it was decided that the challenge of the _World_ must be accepted. For
many who had believed in the total depravity of Jefferson Farnum were
beginning to doubt. Unless the man's character could be impeached
successfully the day was lost. And with four witnesses against him how
could the trouble maker escape?

The committee of investigation consisted of Senator Frome; Clinton
Rogers, the shipbuilder; Thomas Elliott, a law partner of Hardy; James
Moran, a wholesale wheat shipper, and the leading clergyman of Verden.
It sat behind locked doors, adjourning from one office to another to
obtain secrecy.

For the defense appeared as witnesses Marchant, Miller, Mrs. Anderson
and Nellie. To doubt the truth of the young wife's story was impossible.
The agony of shyness and shame that flushed her, the simple broken words
of her little tragedy, bore the stamp of minted gold. It was plain to
see that she was a victim of betrayal, being slowly won back to love of
life by her husband and her child.

The committee in its report told the facts briefly without giving names.
Even P. C. Frome could find no excuse for not signing it.

The effect was instantaneous. On this one throw the machine had staked
everything. That it had lost was now plain. In a day Jeff was the
hero of Verden, of the state at large. His long fight for reform, the
dramatic features of the shanghaing and his return, the collapse of
the charges against his character, all contributed to lift him to dizzy
popularity. He was the very m