but
the correspondents who covered what had promised to be a purely bucolic
assignment, were not slow in seeing their error and retrieving it.
What the Tuscarora pioneers and their descendants heard, the whole
state read; and the discerning perceived that, wherever the party, the
party machine, or the party boss might stand, the governor had scaled
the high plateau of statesmanship, where public opinion is less catered
to than led.

Late in the afternoon Shelby shook the last brown hand in the
serpentine line of country people which coiled in and out the stuffy
parlor of the Lakeview Inn, and cutting loose from the reception
committee under cover of a headache, slipped away into the trees. The
fringe of the wood was defaced with the litter of picnickers, and smelt
of lunch; the din of the agents for new-fangled reapers and ploughs,
whose gaudy paint was doubly garish against the sober background, had
routed the squirrels and birds; but the remoter paths held only silent
lovers, and the camp-ground, where the Widow Weatherwax had mouthed and
played the prophet, stripped of its tents, its zealots, its wavering
torchlights, was full of wholesome sunlight and forest peace.

The spot stirred ghosts, and the governor turned to the murmuring shore
with its gentle mimicry of ocean. Half sheltered by a clump of sumach
sat a woman upon a bit of driftwood and flung pebbles in the lake. He
stared, and then went slowly down to her.

"Ruth," he said, "you here!"

"Your Excellency startled me."

Her banter puzzled him, but the handclasp was warm.

"Forget my office," he petitioned.

"After your tremendous speech to-day? You were his Excellency the
governor of New York with that, and I was properly impressed. It
struck me that you would make a benevolent czar."

"Are you mocking me?"

"God forbid, your Excellency!"

"I'd rather be plain Shelby," he said, studying her profile. "I'm glad
you heard me--glad that you liked it. It was sincere, and you value
sincerity. But I had no notion that you were listening. I supposed
you somewhere with the fashionables."

"I reached home yesterday, and came at once to my lake cottage. I
heard that you were to speak, and braved the picnic to hear you. I
trust you appreciate the sacrifice."

"And--your husband? Is he here too?"

Ruth flung a pebble.

"I believe he's addressing a woman suffrage convention in Chicago
to-day." She gave him a lazy glance. "And Mrs. Shelby--i