et, while Shelby tossed into the
breach everything he realized from his mortgaged quarry interest which
long outstanding debts did not require. Nor were these latter
inconsiderable. Involved in innumerable schemes which sapped his
capital without prospect of ready dividends, it seemed to him that
every land syndicate, stock company, insurance policy, what not, of
them all was demanding instant propitiation. Brave it out with Bowers
as he might, Shelby walked none the less in the shadow of a mighty
fear; and had not Mrs. Hilliard left town for her annual autumn round
of the shops of New York, he could have gone to her prepared to accept
her supremest charity.

In his blackest hour the distracted man encountered the Widow
Weatherwax. Since her sibylline performances at the camp-meeting he
had seen little of her, the fascination of will-making being
temporarily eclipsed by a local temperance crusade led by Mr. Hewett,
which enlisted the full energy of her not inconsiderable powers for
conscience-guided meddling. The parson had deemed the time ripe for a
war on the groggeries of the Flats, with the outcome that most
bar-rooms of the town, including that of the Tuscarora House, were
found to be violating the Sunday closing law. In the legal
unpleasantness which followed, Shelby's name figured as attorney for
the hotel proprietor, one of the lawyer's regular clients. It was a
purely formal service, without moral implication of any sort, but it
bared Shelby's whole legislative record on the liquor question to
pin-prick attack, and cost him, as he now learned from her shocked
lips, the invaluable political support of the widow.

Buttonholed while crossing the court-house lawn, and backed into a
corner between the county clerk's office and the jail, Shelby had to
listen with what patience he might to her denunciation of what she
called his vile concord with Belial.

"Yes, yes, Mrs. Weatherwax," he wedged in finally; "but we can't all
think alike. Now if you were a liquor dealer's wife, you would sing
another song."

The widow shuddered.

"Me!" Another shudder. "Me marry a saloon keeper! Me!--a W.C.T.U.
and a I.O.G.T.!"

Shelby grinned.

"They say I.O.G.T. means 'I Often Get Tight.'" Somehow he could not
resist the ancient rural fling.

"You know well 'nuff 'tain't," retorted the widow, indignantly. "It's
the Inderpendant Order ov Good Templars, and I'm an orf'cer with
regalyer. It's purple, and has gold