saw that. As for the stock--your skirts are clear. You
merely sold in a rising market what I bought in a falling one. If my
position gave me a speculative advantage, it's my own business--nobody
else's--not even the Hon. Seneca Bowers's."

The county leader's working features did not resemble General Grant's.
In that unhappy moment he experienced the pangs of unhonored parenthood.

Presently he put out his hand.

"I'm sorry I offended you, Ross. I supposed myself too seasoned a
campaigner to mind mud-slinging."

Shelby laughed apologies away and they parted friends. On the
threshold it occurred to Bowers to ask:--

"Who is this Dalgetty fellow Sprague mentions? I never heard of him in
politics."

"Nor I. Some ward heeler he thinks I resemble, I guess."

"He'd have made his point stronger by taking somebody that the plain
people know. That's something mugwumps never learn."

"And there's another thing they don't grasp," Shelby added. "One
personal talk with the average voter will outweigh enough high-toned
editorials to sink a ship. When the reformer begins to rub shoulders
in all sorts of places with all sorts of men his halo won't be so
luminous; perhaps he won't call himself a reformer at all--just
politician, perhaps; but he'll saw wood."

CHAPTER II

As a matter of fact, the independent candidate did give the
shoulder-rubbing process a trial. Within the by no means contracted
limits of Volney Sprague's paper-and-ink horizon the flurry of the
attack on Shelby threw its ripples far, but Graves shortly damped the
editor's professional delight by the remark that he had been assured of
no man's vote because of it.

"There's the pity of our lack of time," frowned Sprague. "An
educational campaign can hardly be too long. Many a demagogue has
failed of election because we vote in November and not in dog-days."

"You'll have to admit that you've merely revamped old material. It's
no news that Shelby has packed caucuses, stolen speeches, blackmailed
corporations, jobbed canal contracts, and grovelled to the Boss."

"True," admitted Sprague, ruefully.

"We need the concrete to convince. Take this canal scandal: we've seen
contracts go to Shelby's adherents on unbalanced bids, and the Ditch
swarms with his useless inspectors at four dollars a day; but can you
bring wrong-doing home to him?"

"To prove the Champion of Canals' complicity--what a master stroke!"

The morning after he poppe