ged cleverness and promptly forgot it in
the nine days' wonder over his exploit at the Hilliard quarries.

The town's attitude mirrored that of the congressional district and the
state. Volney Sprague's editorial occasioned some little paragraphing
here and there among up-state newspapers and by brief mention in
_Associated Press_ despatches roused a metropolitan daily of opposite
political faith to one of the satirical thrusts for which it was
famous; whereupon one of its more serious contemporaries found a text
for a thunderous jeremiad on the decay of political morality. Yet
where one person read of Shelby's plagiarism, a score devoured the
sensational accounts of his rescue of Kiska, while of those who read
both, an illogical but human majority considered his atonement complete.

Sprague himself was disposed to gauge Shelby's vogue with the
groundlings as greater than before, and lamented it to Bernard Graves,
who fell wholly into his mood for once and deplored the fatuity of
popular judgment with unlooked-for warmth.

His friend listened with unqualified approval.

"Thank Heaven, you're beginning to take an interest in politics!" he
exclaimed.

The young man flushed.

"There are some things in this man's canvass one can't ignore," he
carefully explained, and tried to think he meant plagiarism.

He had not discussed recent happenings with Ruth Temple. When he took
her the _Whig_ article the morning after the mass-meeting she had
displayed a disconcerting willingness to cloud the vital fact and
excuse Shelby. Indeed, he finally left with the disgusted conviction
that she had pilloried not the sinner but himself,--a not uncommon
outcome in a clash of wits between a woman and a man. After that, he
told himself, she might form what fantastic opinion of this freebooter
she chose without let or hindrance from him, and at the same time he
resolved that she should see less of him. The latter resolution proved
as flimsy as a New Year's vow, but while it needed less than a smile to
whistle him back, the whole distasteful subject of Shelby became
tacitly taboo.

As Ruth was a very woman, often saying less what she really thought
than what she knew would stir dissent, her innermost opinions were less
stable than he fancied. She had not had speech with Shelby since the
mass-meeting, but he had found time that night to ask her to drive with
him, and she anticipated the outing with a zest whose disproportion to
it