his duty, it was not for lack of striving.

"I've tried, Cora," he answered bitterly.

Neither broached a formal reconciliation--such crude devices fell into
disuse early in their marriage; but the man gave her social hours he
could ill afford in the press of the closing session, and presently a
tremendous event from the outside patched, if it could not heal, the
breach. This was nothing less than the launching of Shelby's
presidential boom.

Three factors contributed to this movement: the return of prosperity,
the governor's personality, and the Boss. Shelby won his election in a
midnight of universal hard times; his inauguration saw the dawn; the
legislative session closed amidst a sunrise of splendid promise. By
the deathless fallacy which credits or blames the ruling powers for
everything, natural or supernatural, Shelby's party reaped abundantly
where it had sown with niggard hand. The governor's personal deserts
were more solid, the public recognizing his retarding ratchet as the
cause of the machine's continence and the lowered tax-rate. Apparently
the Legislature bore him no ill will for his curbing hand. A quiet
word had issued from the Boss that the governor's vetoes must stand,
and Shelby's one pet measure, the appointment of a commission to deal
with the improvement of the canals, had passed both Houses by a vote
which was almost non-partisan. A spontaneous demand seemed to well
from the people that this faithful steward be sent higher.

But Shelby knew something of the rearing of that tenderest of plants in
the political garden--the spontaneous demand. In the voice of the
people he had so often read the will of the Boss. The inspired
laudations of country editors, the resulting echoes in the city press,
the interviews with the knowing ones who withheld their names, the
genuine momentum lent by the easily impressed--all the covert workings
of spontaneity were known to him from the days of apprenticeship at the
Boss's feet. The method was transparent, the motive only was hazy; yet
he divined the motive itself with sufficient accuracy. The Boss
thought he knew too much. It is well to make your own governor, but to
make him too well is ill. It was this one's drawback that he had
passed the No Admittance sign of the workshop and got the trade secrets
of the boss business at his finger ends. The pupil smiled sometimes
when he recalled the first great rencounter with the master. The birch
and fr