"You made skilful use of that method of resuscitation. Where in the world did you pick it up?" "Every schoolboy knows it," returned the politician, shortly; "or every schoolboy should." CHAPTER VIII Shelby's forecast of the effect of the _Whig's_ exposure was brilliantly fulfilled. People did laugh over it and say that it was a good speech, whatever its source. In popular conception literary theft is at worst a venial sin whose very iniquity is doubtful unless found out. The culprit's average fellow-townsman accepted the incident as fresh evidence of his acknowledged 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.