"Of these three passages, rightly thought by Calvin Ross Shelby's audience the most telling of his speech, the first and second are unmistakably plagiarisms of ideas, while the third, differing from its original in but one telltale, damning word, is shameless, flat-footed theft. Either of the first two offences committed singly might be unconscious; conjoined they betray deliberation; united with the third they 'smell to heaven.' It is high time for the voters of this congressional district to ask themselves the question. Shall we vote for a thief?" "Well, sir, well?" exploded Bowers at last. Shelby tossed the paper aside with a laugh. "It's well done." "Well done!" Bowers dropped one of his infrequent oaths. "Have you nothing else to say?" "Yes; it's true, more or less." "You admit it?" "Keep cool. It was this way: I was pressed for time when I prepared my speech,--you know that,--and it occurred to me to adapt one or two of Garfield's illustrations. I've studied him some, and he said many things that fit in nowadays as well as they ever did. Plenty of speakers quarry there I guess. I honestly meant to give him the credit of that soldier business in my peroration, but somehow the quotation marks were lost in the shuffle. There was but one chance in a thousand that anybody would notice." "Somebody did," growled Bowers, and spat our his mangled cigar. "Yes; I ran against a man with a memory." "It wasn't on the square, Ross. It'll hurt you." Shelby eyed him shrewdly. "You read speeches in Washington that I wrote," he reminded. "That's different. Lots of congressmen do that,--even senators. They're not posted on everything." "No," Shelby agreed, with an irony too subtle for Bowers; "they certainly are not. However, there's no need to borrow trouble over this thing. People will laugh a little, say it was a good speech, wherever I got it, and vote the straight party ticket despite Bernard Graves." "Graves," said Bowers. "What has he to do with it?" "Everything; he's the little joker with the memory." Bowers whistled. "What is he after?" Shelby jerked his head toward the Temple doorstep where Bernard still lingered. "After her." CHAPTER VII "Humor a silk stocking according to his crotchet, that's my maxim," submitted Bowers as they threshed the matter out in its latest aspect. "I can't see its application to Graves. He's outside politics; hates the very name, they say." "Practical politics is applied human nature. If a rule is sound in politics, it will work anywhere this side of the pearly gates. Graves may not care a tinker's dam for politics, but evidently he does get queasy when another man's ideas are misappropriated. Perhaps that's his crotchet. Writes himself, doesn't he?" "Some rubbish or other," returned Shelby, contemptuously. "That's where he is susceptible, to my thinking. I don't cotton to your woman theory. I say leave women out of politics. So conciliate him; humor his crotchet."