rvation compartment of the private
car, and on Shelby's entrance every man jack of them got upon his legs to
welcome him, as if the Boss had twitched them by unseen strings. His
Excellency clapped him graciously on the shoulder, the staff officials
and the secretary reflected and passed on the gubernatorial warmth, the
senator pressed cigars, and the newspaper people, whose habit was to lump
all personages as frail humanity, went through their introductions like
the good fellows that they were. It was unlooked for, delightful,
insidiously flattering--a plain intimation that he had become a star of
greater magnitude.

"We're due to pull out in three minutes," the governor told him. "I was
really worried about you."

In their several echoes the secretary and staff conveyed that they too
had known alarm.

"Fact is, we bank on you to mesmerize the rural vote," put in Handsome
Ludlow, jocosely. "You'll work your passage all right, all right."

The jest carried a covert truth. They did count on Shelby, and Shelby
did work his passage in sober earnest. The governor who sought
reelection was a mediocrity of means--a barrel, as the phrase goes--whose
function in campaigning was to draw checks, shed radiance on cheering
crowds, and make way for speakers who had something to utter besides hems
and haws. No one could be less fitted for the five-minute give-and-take
talks from the rear platform than this amiable figurehead, and no one of
his company was so much at home in it as Shelby, on whom the brunt
swiftly fell. The senator, the staff officials, and even the poor
governor were passable in the deliberate evening meetings for which they
were billed in this town and that--though here, too, Shelby frequently
snatched the honors; but the heady victory over the chaffing, brawling,
even missile-throwing packs surging round the car wheels and up the
steps, was always his and his alone. Suggested to fill an unexpected
vacancy, he was quick to appreciate that chance, and the Boss had given
him the opportunity of his life; and with an eye on another campaign two
years hence, and with the heartening thought that by now the State
Committee's dollars were implanting convictions throughout the Demijohn
District's fertile soil, he put forth the impetuous best that was in him.

Nor was Shelby's best contemptible. The charge up the canal counties had
not measured half its course before the increasing crowds, the space
given his do