s surface cause she did not analyze.

On the appointed afternoon she saw his horse and buggy brought from the
Tuscarora House and hitched at the curb below his office, and as it
lacked little of the hour set she thrust home the last hat-pin and
stood jacketed and gloved by a window, waiting his coming. The hour
struck and brought no Shelby, though punctuality was the first article
of his creed. Out in the drowsy thoroughfare a sprinkling-cart jarred
heavily past, spurting ineffectually at the yellow dust which rose
perversely under its baptism and surged beneath the awnings of the
shops. It was Saturday, universal shopping-day in the farmland, and a
ramshackle line of rustic vehicles--buggies, democrats, sulkies, lumber
wagons--with graceless plough horses slumbering in the thills,
stretched in ragged alignment down the curb. Shelby's smart turnout
seemed fairly urban by contrast, and Ruth saw that it met with the
critical approval of the loungers.

A quarter of an hour slipped by; no Shelby. His cob fretted at the
autumn flies and whinnied to be gone. A half-hour elapsed, unfruitful;
an hour. Then did Queen Ruth, on whose imperious nod a little world
had hung from babyhood, perceive the recreant come calmly down from his
law office in company with some creature of relatively common clay,
shake hands, chat further, shake hands again, take up his reins amid an
interchange of badinage with the bystanders, and so, gossiping still,
jog deliberately on--to her!

She spun on her heel as he turned in at the drive and rang for her maid.

"If Mr. Shelby should call," she directed, wrenching at her gloves,
"say I'm not at home."

Shelby's occupations in the meantime had been absorbing. In the course
of an earnest conference at the Tuscarora House the evening of the
quarry accident, the Hon. Samuel Bowers had removed his cigar to let
fall a sententious observation.

"As long as an all-wise Providence saw fit to dump that sand-bank on
one of the Polacks," said he, "I call it a piece of downright Ross
Shelby luck that it fell on Kiska."

"I should have worked as hard over a dago," rejoined Shelby; "or a dog
either, I guess."

"M-yes; I reckon. But you're not complaining that it wasn't some dago
who doesn't know a ballot from a bunch of garlic? No, I reckon not."
His eyes twinkled, and Shelby flickered a responsive grin. "Note a
rule for candidates: When about to effect the spectacular rescue of one
of the toil