well played."

"I didn't write that editorial."

"I know you didn't. It had the Volney Sprague earmarks. But you did
what is more important,--you inspired it."

"Well?"

"Just this: in a general way I admit its justness, and come frankly to
tell you so."

"Why should you trouble yourself?"

Shelby throttled his mounting ire.

"Because," he returned slowly, "I recognize your ability and want your
support. If you mean to interest yourself in politics, I can be of
service to you. I know, of course, you don't think politicians are
necessarily scamps."

"I judge no class of men so summarily," Graves opened his mouth to
protest. "That is too much like Burke's indictment against a whole
people, you know."

The allusion was not familiar, but Shelby said, "Exactly," with labored
calm. He fancied that he detected a note of condescension, and
resented it passionately.

"The average politician isn't such a bad lot," he went on. "His
methods don't always square with the Decalogue, but he means well, and
in the long run does well. I don't say this to pat myself on the back.
You know me. I'm a plain, practical man, and try to steer by
common-sense. If I'm elected to Congress, I'll do my best to make the
district proud of me, and I'll promise you personally, right here and
now, that I will deliver no man's speeches but my own."

Graves wished that he would make an end of his excuses and go away.
The whole episode bored him, and his mind wandered even while he
listened. He was thinking that that muscular Pole directing the
planting of a steam drill below the sand-bank a rather statuesque
figure for these prosaic days. The man had jumped upon the tripod of
the drill in ordering the work, and loomed large and competent. Graves
thought him in feature not unlike his great compatriot John Sobieski,
and tried to picture him in the Polish king's armor which he remembered
to have seen in some European collection. Shelby's silence recalled
him.

"Really, there's no necessity for you to explain or promise anything to
me," he rejoined coldly. "I'm not in politics, and I don't care to be."

Shelby had reached his last ditch.

"You think you're too damned good for it," he broke out. "It's the
lily-fingered people of your stripe who make reform a byword and a
laughing-stock."

Graves's face flamed, and he shrank inwardly with a scholar's
repugnance from the rencounter. Outwardly, however, he was truculent.

"Su