thical issues
involved in the present election.

The minister entered the pulpit almost immediately and laid eyes upon
Shelby as he announced the opening hymn, coloring at the discovery.
His voice wavered perceptibly in the earlier parts of the service as
the absorbed congregation noted; but by sermon time he had conquered
his nervousness, and with set jaw thundered out his text from Jeremiah:
"Why trimmest thou thy way?" With this entering wedge the parson clove
into an analysis of practical politics which did not stick at
instancing corruption near at hand, and whose climax was a bitter
denunciation of ignoble leadership and the doubly ignoble laxity of the
indifferent led. It was as pointed an attack on local conditions as he
could frame without complications with his deacons, who were
politically of divers minds, and the fusion managers might have used
its final exhortation to "vote your conscience" as their own
ammunition, without altering a word.

Shelby sat under it all like a graven image, careless of the raking
fire of eyes from every point, sang "America" with unction at the
close, and advancing with the benediction to the pulpit stair,
congratulated the bewildered clergyman on his "effort," and before he
could conceive, much less deliver, a coherent reply, slipped down a
side aisle and greeted Ruth.

"Vigorous, but intemperate," said he, "and typically ministerial. The
right road and the wrong road in politics don't abound in sign-posts,
and pretty frequently both carry grist to the same mill."

The riddle of his character piqued Ruth at that moment as it never had,
and before they separated he obtained permission to call upon her after
tea--a privilege which he interpreted as license to present himself
betimes and stay to an unconscionable hour. Yet he talked fluently and
well, and went out at length into the night tingling with the
consciousness of having touched fingers with the higher life of his
cherished aspirations. By the token of Ruth's interest, moreover, he
took hope that he had not been found wanting where he was most
ambitious to excel. It was a thing to lay to heart, an epochal page in
his history which sleep alone could fitly round. Nevertheless, a
disturbing impression of something essential left undone haunted the
borderland of dreams to remain formless till morning, when his pocket
handkerchief jerked a note odorous of patchouli to his bedroom floor.

It was annoying. Of course