frost; and, finally, the householder himself emerge and light
a cigar whose ruddy tip winked for a second in the thickening dusk.
Listing from side to side, big Joe Hilliard tramped heavily down and
away to his nightly haunt in the billiard room of the Tuscarora House.
As the quarry owner's great bulk vanished Shelby entered the scene,
briskly crosscut the Hilliard lawn, and bounded up the steps just
quitted by the substantial Joe.

"There; he's done it again!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowers.

"Who has done what?" grunted her husband, from the lounge. He was
coatless and shoeless, and had spread a newspaper over his bald spot to
the annoyance of a few superannuated yet active flies.

"Ross Shelby. He's gone to Cora Hilliard's again!"

"Well, let him," said Bowers, from beneath the news of the day. "It's
a free country."

Mrs. Bowers smoothed a mended sock and rolled it into a neat ball with
its fellow by aid of an arc light which sizzled into sudden brilliance
among the maples.

"'Tisn't his going that's such a scandal," she discriminated. "All the
men run there. It's the way he goes. This is the ninth time I've
known him to wait till Joe Hilliard had left the house."

"Looks as if he didn't dote on Joe's society," chuckled Bowers. "I
can't say that I do myself."

"It's a scandal," repeated Mrs. Bowers, firmly. Her husband remaining
indifferent, she assumed her wifely prerogative to pass rigorous
judgment upon his conscience. "And it's your plain duty, Seneca
Bowers, to speak to him."

The old man flung off his newspaper with a snort.

"What call have I to set up as a censor of public morals?" he demanded
testily. "I'm not Shelby's guardian. He's of age. He's cut his eye
teeth. Talk sense, Eliza."

Mrs. Bowers essayed a flank attack.

"You're the Tuscarora boss, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm county leader."

"What you say goes?"

"I suppose so."

She pushed her Socratic pitfall a step farther.

"When you say run so-and-so, he runs, doesn't he?"

Bowers permitted himself a dry smile in the dark.

"Most generally."

"Then you're responsible," she argued triumphantly. "You got Ross
Shelby into politics; you've run him for this and that; he's your
charge."

The Hon. Seneca Bowers turned his disgusted face to the wall.

"So you've the Sunday-school idea of politics," he threw over his
shoulder with heavy sarcasm. "I'm to teach a Bible class and pass out
dinkey little reward-of-merit cards to the