thick-skulled
Poles and the rest had made an awful mess of the ballots. Tom"--to one
of the onlookers--"'phone the Flats again."

But on the instant the Flats embodied itself in the doorway in the
person of a breathless messenger. Bowers's trembling fingers fumbled
the paper and cast it fluttering toward the floor, but Shelby fastened
on it in mid-air, read it, crumpled it, mechanically made it smooth
again, and laid it gently on his desk. There came a second roar from
the street, a medley of cheers, groans, hisses, and the blare of horns.
Shelby again drew a curtain. On the _Whig's_ screen was displayed a
huge rooster with the legend: IT'S GRAVES!

Shelby caught a murmuring from the group behind him: vapid expressions
of regret, scorching condolence, pitying oaths; then the voice of a
newcomer, a newspaper correspondent, asking Bowers if they conceded
their defeat.

He spun about, crying,--

"We concede nothing."

The reporter said that the returns as received indicated a slight
majority for the fusion candidate.

"We dispute the returns."

"But, Ross,--" Bowers put in.

"We dispute the returns. Should the official count be adverse, we
shall dispute that. In view of the methods employed by the allies of
the independents, it becomes nothing less than a public duty to carry
the contest to the floor of the House of Representatives."

"It will be a House of your political friends," remarked the
correspondent, impersonally. "Shall I then quote you as claiming your
election?"

"Most emphatically, yes. Quote me as confident of a verdict approving
my public course and rebuking the slanderous attack on my private
character."

"What's the use?" protested Bowers, as the reporter hurried off in
quest of Bernard Graves. "It's too late to bluff."

"Use," echoed Shelby. "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the
returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats.
"Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you;
our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the
Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards
for stupidity and take every trick. Let me 'phone the Flats."

And he was right. The inspectors of the belated precinct, conscious of
unwonted delay, nervous from long weighing of defective ballots,
harassed by incessant demands for their report, had capped the climax
of their offending by announcing the result as favor