"We refuse, lastly, to support a candidate, be his nomination as unsullied as his personal integrity, and his legislative career as free from 'strikes' as his advocacy of our pirate-infested waterways is disinterested, who is yet so slavishly the henchman of his party machine that no measure it may propose is too unsavory to enlist his Dugald Dalgetty loyalty. By your closed lips you countenance the land-jobbing steal which your great state Boss failed by the merest fluke to saddle upon the River and Harbor Bill passed by the last Congress, and purposes to press anew;--dare you vote against your owner, Mr. Shelby?" To all of which, reiterated and emphasized in pamphlet, broadside, poster, and stump speech, Shelby said publicly never a word, professing himself a believer in the policy of dignified silence. He touched the matter after an impersonal fashion with Bowers, however, as they read the onslaught. "Give me the liquor habit, the tobacco habit, the opium habit, singly or all together," said he, "but preserve me from the vice of rhetoric." Bowers had not this fine detachment. "I don't wish to nose into your private concerns, Ross," he began, with visible embarrassment, "but this third count implicates me. I'd like to ask whether that stock I sold for you in Wall Street last winter was yours by--by--" "By bona fide purchase?" whipped in Shelby. "Yes, sir; out and out. Do you think me as big a fool as this dream-chaser pretends I am?" "No, no." "Nobody should know better than you why that bill was introduced. You brought it to me from the Boss. Those railway people forgot that their party can't run campaigns on wind, and in his own way he jogged their memory. I saw that. As for the stock--your skirts are clear. You merely sold in a rising market what I bought in a falling one. If my position gave me a speculative advantage, it's my own business--nobody else's--not even the Hon. Seneca Bowers's." The county leader's working features did not resemble General Grant's. In that unhappy moment he experienced the pangs of unhonored parenthood. Presently he put out his hand. "I'm sorry I offended you, Ross. I supposed myself too seasoned a campaigner to mind mud-slinging." Shelby laughed apologies away and they parted friends. On the threshold it occurred to Bowers to ask:-- "Who is this Dalgetty fellow Sprague mentions? I never heard of him in politics." "Nor I. Some ward heeler he thinks I resemble, I guess." "He'd have made his point stronger by taking somebody that the plain people know. That's something mugwumps never learn." "And there's another thing they don't grasp," Shelby added. "One personal talk with the average voter will outweigh enough high-toned editorials to sink a ship. When the reformer begins to rub shoulders in all sorts of places with all sorts of men his halo won't be so luminous; perhaps he won't call himself a reformer at all--just politician, perhaps; but he'll saw wood." CHAPTER II