spoken, put out her hand, and slipped past him, flushing, through the
gate.

"I can't fail now," he exulted, detaining her an instant. "And victory
means so much. It means--listen: I'll tell you a thing I've breathed
to no one else; success to-day means the governorship two years hence!
It's been fairly promised me--the governorship! That's the great
stake--part of it, rather; you're the rest; you who believe in me and
bid me win. I've not changed my mind since the day we rode together.
I told you to think over what I said, and I've given you time. I meant
then to come to you on the night of my election--a victor--and so I
shall. I couldn't know that I should have the executive mansion to
offer you, but it's none too good. I'll come! I'll come!"

CHAPTER XIII

There was more solid ground than mere confidence in his destiny behind
Shelby's bold front. The earliest mail delivery had shed a glimmer of
hope in the shape of a midnight note from Mrs. Hilliard. He did not
require her reminder that the voting strength of Little Poland was no
longer to be counted in his column--he had thought and fought that out in
the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that
Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election
day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at
eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his steps on leaving Ruth.

Mrs. Hilliard had named a cemetery on the immediate outskirts as the
rendezvous--a choice on whose evil omen Shelby wasted no thought. In the
heyday of their flirtation he and Mrs. Hilliard had made frequent use of
it as a Platonic trysting-place, and he climbed the silent paths toward
the summit of the mount, as it was styled in that level land, with no
sentiment save approval of her wisdom in seizing upon the one spot in all
New Babylon whose privacy was certain.

Mrs. Hilliard, shivering in the lee of a pretentious granite shaft which
bore her family name, was more susceptible.

"Bleak--desolate," she chattered. "What an end for our Fools' Paradise.
But where else could we escape their prying eyes?"

"You've heard what they're saying?"

She nodded listlessly.

"Who has not heard?" As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she
brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen
still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a
light spiral into the nipping air. "U