ature, his whole demeanor a graceful protest against this retarding
of their pleasure. "Here are the afternoon papers if you care to look
them over; they come upon us before the ink is dry on the morning's
batch. No, no; not that uncomfortable chair, Mr. Shelby. Take the
lounge, I beg of you. Stand on no ceremony here. This is Liberty
Hall."

Somebody should write the philosophy of chairs. One may retain
convictions in furniture which is palpably vertebrate; lapped in
billowing upholstery it is a moot question; and like many a caller's
before him, Shelby's brain tissue became a jelly of flattered
complacency. It sufficed merely to simmer in a sense of equality with
the silver-haired gentleman at the desk. The Boss! He had heard that
the great man loathed the homely title his leadership entailed. It was
not pretty; but its rough forceful Americanism had never struck Shelby
as inept till this moment. Applied to this suave yet virile creature
it fell grotesquely short, missing the key-note of his supremacy. Set
back some centuries, this Boss would have been his Eminence the
Cardinal.

It may be doubted had the Boss actually worn the red hat whether a
procession of liveried messengers could have impressed Shelby more than
did a small desk telephone half concealed by the chrysanthemums. Its
bell tinkled incessantly, and with infinite patience the leader
interrupted his work again and again to answer it, seeming from
Shelby's vantage point to murmur secret messages into the petals of the
flowers. The dismembered half of a telephone conversation is not
ordinarily illuminating, and the Boss's words in themselves said
little. How tremendously much they might connote, the visitor as a
business man and a politician thoroughly appreciated, and his
imagination did the occasion something more than justice. Desk
telephones were unknown in the simpler Tuscarora world.

Thus the five minutes were lengthened out to ten, and then with
apologies to a quarter of an hour. Shelby's eyes dropped to the
newspapers on his knee and fastened on a headline--

"SHELBY AND THE DEMIJOHN."

It required a second reading. The absorbing present had for the moment
sponged the morning's happenings from his thoughts. To remember
explained without cheapening the sensation. He was used to a relative
prominence in the rural press, but neither this nor the talk with the
reporters had prepared him for inch-high capitals on the first pa