executive as a craven monarch yielding his sceptre to the
leering power behind the throne; as a marionette twitched by obvious
wires; as a muzzled dog, ticketed with the Boss's name.

Whereupon Shelby, in a quiet way, did an audacious thing. By an odd
chance the first enactment of the Legislature which reached his desk
affected Tuscarora County. It was a general measure concerning marsh
lands, philanthropically worded and fathered by an assemblyman from an
eastern county; but its special purpose, as Shelby fathomed, was to
give certain Tuscarora people a selfish advantage in a locality as
familiar to him as his hand. The Swamp, as Tuscarora called it,
embodied his boyhood notion of primeval nature, the one spot untamed
amidst tilled and retilled commonplaceness, the last fastness and
abiding-place of the unknown. Rude corduroy roads threaded the
wilderness in parts, and from this Red-Sea sort of passage the lad had
peered and questioned in delicious fear. Even now the man had but to
shut his eyes to recall it with the senses of the boy. Cowslip, wood
violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit bloomed again, the scent of mint was in
his nostrils, fairy lakes lured amidst the ferns, and the way wound
through lofty halls whose wonderful pillars set foot in emerald pools
and sprang in vaulting hung high with wild grape. Once in those tender
years he had skirted the spot by night when owls hooted, unnatural
frogs boomed, will-o'-the-wisp stalked abroad, and Old Mystery held
carnival; that breathless experience almost outdid the delights by day.
All this issued from the phraseology of a bill--this, and something
more. He held the measure a day or two and invited its sponsors,
ostensible and real, to a conference. They were trained legislators,
with whom he had served and fraternized, and in this matter furthered
the interests of men in his native county who had backed him from the
beginning of his career.

"Gentlemen," he said, regarding them quizzically, "this bill reminds me
of a Tuscarora story." They laughed at the familiar beginning, and the
governor laughed with them. "It's about a man who ran a grist-mill on
a creek fed by a certain swamp, which I guess you know about. He was
easy-going, the water was often too low for grinding, and the little
mill had business for six, since there wasn't a rival within thirty
miles. The pioneers came prepared to camp when they brought grist, and
I suppose loafed around pitching quo