visit Lakewood together, and the invitation no sooner recurred to her
than she sent a message saying that she had found it possible immediately
to join her at her home. Shelby had assented to this plan, and directly
set about escorting her to her destination. No dread of Ludlow prompted
this vigilance. He discerned that that glamour had forever waned. The
woman's jerking nerves made him fear a collapse. Stripped of shams for
once, she had his pity.

As he paid the cabman at the ferry-house entrance an incoming boat
discharged its passengers, who from habit scurried forth as if it were
morning, and the day's work lay all before. Two men issued with the
foremost, one of whom spied Shelby as he followed his wife through the
dingy swinging doors.

"Great guns!" he said; "the governor!"

The Boss wheeled.

"What's that, Krantz?" he demanded sharply.

Without replying Jacob Krantz darted into the ferry-house, slipped into
the waiting line before the ticket-office, and watched Shelby make his
purchase. The governor left the window without noticing him, and joining
his wife at the wicket passed on to the boat.

Krantz shot out of doors with his heavy lids propped wide.

"He bought tickets for Orange, and there's no return train before
daylight--I heard him inquire. Do you see what he has done for us? He's
out of the state--_out of the state_! See? The lieutenant-governor can
sign the bill!"

The Boss drew him quietly aside.

"No, no," he returned. "This is New York--not Montana."

Staring out at the clamoring cabbies, the leader reflected. If this
secretive governor intended either to veto or to sign the canal bill, he
would scarcely leave Albany the evening before the last day given him to
act. Did his absence not argue that he meant to let the measure become a
law without his signature? Despite his representations to Shelby, this
was the course the Boss actually expected the governor to take. It was
the course which he, given the man's difficulties, would himself follow
were he in Shelby's place. But he had found it unsafe to forecast this
man's actions by his own, and by temperament he counted nothing certain
till he knew it as a fact accomplished. The governor would undoubtedly
return to Albany sometime to-morrow; it therefore behooved him to delay
that return until the time for hostile action should expire. Searching
out a telegraph office, he ascertained the point at which a message would