Mrs. Hilliard had a certain claim, and had
he been less occupied on his return from stumping the state with the
governor he would have gone to her. By rights he should have made the
effort to see her after receiving this message--yesterday, in fact;
yesterday the golden. He would have gone, too, if--frankly, if the
stature of the man he had become had less exacting ideals of womanly
perfection. To the grown man of broadened horizon Mrs. Hilliard had
come indubitably to seem a bore. Still, she had her claim.

"I'll drop in after election," he decided, and laid his hand to the
day's work.

It proved a long, hard pull, made up of details petty enough in
themselves, but considerable in their relation to the whole scheme of
his defence. However, he reached its end cheery in the belief that the
sun of Tuesday would light no Waterloo.

"I'll win," he said to Bowers. "By no walkover, I admit; but I'll win."

"M-yes; I guess, but by the narrowest margin the Demijohn ever gave.
The slightest flurry might snow us under."

"I'd stake my head on it."

"Some who have betted less than that have hedged."

"Who?" exclaimed the candidate, quickly.

"Tuscarora House sports--I won't mention names--but poker friends of
yours."

"Sandy lot, they are," broke out Shelby, contemptuously. "I hope you
counteracted the effect."

"I instructed some of our people to cover everything they would put
up," Bowers answered dryly. "You know I don't bet myself."

Shelby guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Same way you don't stoop to buy the purchasable? Lord! If the
Tuscarora floaters only knew their Santa Claus!"

But Bowers merely coughed.

Tickled with his joke at the expense of his associate whose handling of
the State Committee's saving aid had been masterly, Shelby went to his
evening meal in a humor which even a second note from Mrs. Hilliard
could not damp. In scent, brevity, and chirography it was the
counterpart of the first, telling him that the nameless writer was
wretched, and begging him to come to her. The appeal found him in a
softened mood. Viewed at the close of an irksome day, Mrs. Hilliard's
society had attractions which his hypercritical mind of the morning
hours slighted; and while her message in itself left his withers
unwrung, he concluded that it was perhaps as well to break gently with
"poor Cora" now, as later, when possibly greater growth and broader
horizons might create barriers yet more