e warm tones of the
hangings, the Spanish leather, the lavish mahogany, glowed responsive to
the fingering sunlight, and the painted simulacra of his predecessors
looked down almost benignantly from their gilded frames. The little cell
behind the wainscoting, into which the increasing complexity of affairs
had forced the recent executives, claimed him during most of his working
hours; but it was as rightful tenant of this vast chamber that he felt
most the governor of New York. It epitomized for him not merely the
commonwealth of the present, huge as it was, but the whole historic past
since the September day when Hendrik Hudson's _Half Moon_ dropped anchor
down yonder in the stream. He felt himself no more the successor of
these frock-coated moderns whose oil presentments covered panelling and
frieze than of the periwigs who ruled before them. He was the heir of
Stuyvesant, Dongan, and Lord Lovelace no less than of Cleveland, Van
Buren, and John Jay. There had been sturdy souls among that company; men
who had hoped mightily, striven mightily, sometimes achieved mightily.
Some few had attained the presidency of the United States; some barely
missed the prize; some pursued it to their bitter graves. Where would he
rank? According to a newspaper he carried in his hand, it lay with him
this day to determine. Yet for one so omniscient, the editor was chary
of counsel.

Shelby went on to his little inner room and took up the day's routine
with his secretary, who casually dropped the news that the Boss had that
morning arrived in Albany and begun to receive the faithful at an early
hour. Whether owing to this cause or not, Shelby's own quota of
legislative callers was small. At ten o'clock he met briefly the
delegates of a labor organization, who in an embarrassed fashion had much
to say of plutocrats and trusts; and with their departure came a
fluttering invasion from a young ladies' boarding-school, headed by a
chaperone laboriously intent on improving the girlish mind. All
requested autographs, which were readily supplied from the stock in hand,
and a round half-dozen asked the private secretary in strictest
confidence if the governor were a married man.

He had but just returned to his desk when an orderly handed him the card
of the Boss.

"You'll see him here?" asked the man.

"No. In the executive chamber," answered Shelby.

The Boss stood beside the massive fireplace, gazing pensively up at a
portrait