sat in a sheltered corner of her
veranda with a caller. The latter proved to be Bernard Graves, sunning
himself with a cat's content.

"Industrious young man," Shelby observed with the irony of whole-souled
dislike. "Inherits a comfortable property, goes to an expensive
college, dawdles through Europe, and then comes home to play carpet
knight and read poetry to girls. Why doesn't he go to work?"

Bowers made no reply to the gibe. He was watching Ruth. Presently in
his slow way he checked off her qualifications:--

"Handsome girl, good education, kind disposition, rich, no airs, and no
incumbrances, barring her companion, the old maid cousin, who could be
pensioned. Ross, she'd do you more good than a brace of married women."

Shelby threw off the laugh of a contented man.

"I'm not in the marrying class."

"Then you'd better enter." His hand on the door, Bowers asked, "Your
contribution for the county campaign fund ready?"

"Draw you a check any time," the candidate returned jauntily.

Nevertheless, when the county leader had gone Shelby gave a diligent
quarter-hour to his bankbook. By and by he took an opera glass from a
drawer and focussed it on the pair below. So his clerk came upon him,
compelling a ruse of adjusting the instrument.

"One lens has dust in it," he declared. Perceiving Bernard Graves pass
down the box-bordered path, he left his office for the day.

That evening Shelby took certain steps to prosper his coming rally at
the court-house, one of which was duly noted by Mrs. Seneca Bowers. It
was this lady's habit in summer evenings to discuss the doings of her
immediate neighbors from her piazza, but now that the nights were cool
she had shifted to the bay window of a room styled by courtesy the
library from a small bookcase filled with Patent Office Reports and
similar offerings of a beneficent government. This station embraced a
wide prospect of shady street flanked by pleasantly sloping lawns and
dwellings of various architectural pretence. Most proximate and most
interesting to Mrs. Bowers was the Hilliard house, and while she rocked
placidly over her darning, she contrived to hold this gingerbread
edifice in a scrutiny which permitted the escape of no slightest
movement of chick or child. She saw the newsboy leave the evening city
papers; Milicent Hilliard dance down the leaf-strewn walk to a last
half-hour's play; a white-capped maid sheet the geranium beds against
possible