right. "Keep your vote, you pompous
ignoramus," he jeered, and left him sputtering.

Worsting the choleric physician in argument was a mere matter of
keeping one's own temper, and Shelby took no pride in his victory. It
was a relief to know that he knew so little, but the possibility
remained that, in the weakness of convalescence, Bernard might let fall
details more damaging than Dr. Crandall's tissue of half-knowledge and
inference. Ruth and pneumonia eliminated, the quarrel might have
become public property and welcome, with a likely chance of its working
to his advantage; but, alas, he himself had dragged Ruth into it past
all elimination, and now Bernard's sickness had whipped up a sea of
maudlin sympathy which exposure might easily precipitate in a political
tidal wave.

From this day forth, event crowded event. The news from the sick-room
was the signal for renewed activity all along the line of battle, and
the spectre of his great need haunted Shelby with added terrors.
Bernard Graves's allies, apt disciples of the late Chuck O'Rourke as
they were, jumped at the shining possibilities laid open by their
candidate's condition, and, abetted financially by their State
Committee, set a pace in corruption unprecedented in the checkered
history of the Demijohn. Volney Sprague was powerless. The
freebooters listened sedately to his protests and redoubled their
offending, well aware that in their candidate's chamber politics could
have yet no place. Far from the turmoil, the celebrity ate the jellies
of his idolaters, and spent his waking hours in the impractical
companionship of a certain Shelley and one John Keats.

The beset leaders strained the machine's every cog to meet the
emergency. Out from a corner of the Chairman of the County Committee's
safe came a pudgy manuscript book which few eyes ever saw,--a book made
up of voters' names, their party, and at times their price set down in
strange symbols which the initiated might translate into terms of
dollars and cents. Probably every county committee in the Demijohn
Congressional District could show the like. There was earnest thumbing
of these volumes, with changing of symbols to fit changed conditions,
and the call went out for money. Little came. The State Committee was
deaf to argument or entreaty, and the Demijohn seemed drained. Shelby
and Bowers personally did what they could. For reputation's sake, the
old leader went down deep into his pock