gnly
back. "Our relations, I take it, should be confidential."

Practice followed precept, and in that delightful atmosphere Shelby's
confidences flowered like young May. Tuscarora County was put through
its paces for a gaping world; Clinton's Ditch--"well-spring of New
York's commercial supremacy, gentlemen"--shown in rosiest apotheosis;
the Empire State pedestalled imperially among the nations. Nor could
his versatility be bounded by politics alone. The inevitable allusion
to Bernard Graves's poem involved literature, and to stand, as he did,
under the same roof with the nymphs who had long bodied forth his
pictorial ideal, was to invite a public avowal of his proposed
championship of free art. He was lured the farther into this quagmire
by the guileless questioning of one of his listeners, who lingered in
obvious fascination after his fellows had departed, and, in happy
ignorance that the cherubic youth was the son of an artist of
distinction, and himself no mean critic of things artistic, Shelby
voiced opinions more vigorous than discreet.

"There was a time," he confessed apropos of the nymphs, "when I thought
those ladies the best ever. Young eyes won't hesitate between a plump
Venus and a lean Madonna."

"And now?"

"Well, I haven't altogether renounced the world, the flesh, and the
devil, but my taste has changed. A good animal picture fetches
me,--something like Rosa What's-her-name's 'Horse Fair' you've got
up-town in Central Park. I call that big art."

"Big art; that's the word," agreed the cherub, shaking hands. "It
measures 197 x 93 1/2," he murmured to his cigarette.

CHAPTER VIII

The Boss was an awesome figure to up-state politicians, and Shelby
approached his place of business with a trepidation not wholly owing to
his tangled fortunes. It was his first visit. There had been meetings
between them at Saratoga conventions, and more times than a few he had
furthered the leader's indirect ends in the Albany committee-rooms and
on the floor of the Assembly; but greater than Shelby had found it
impossible to penetrate the great man's inner circle at Saratoga, and
their subterranean dealings in Albany and elsewhere had usually been
transacted by way of Bowers. The Boss's methods were circuitous, cog
fitting smoothly to cog till the remote agent rather than himself
seemed the prime mover. Only in emergencies was he direct.

His apparent aloofness multiplied his power. He held no o