As a matter of fact, the independent candidate did give the shoulder-rubbing process a trial. Within the by no means contracted limits of Volney Sprague's paper-and-ink horizon the flurry of the attack on Shelby threw its ripples far, but Graves shortly damped the editor's professional delight by the remark that he had been assured of no man's vote because of it. "There's the pity of our lack of time," frowned Sprague. "An educational campaign can hardly be too long. Many a demagogue has failed of election because we vote in November and not in dog-days." "You'll have to admit that you've merely revamped old material. It's no news that Shelby has packed caucuses, stolen speeches, blackmailed corporations, jobbed canal contracts, and grovelled to the Boss." "True," admitted Sprague, ruefully. "We need the concrete to convince. Take this canal scandal: we've seen contracts go to Shelby's adherents on unbalanced bids, and the Ditch swarms with his useless inspectors at four dollars a day; but can you bring wrong-doing home to him?" "To prove the Champion of Canals' complicity--what a master stroke!" The morning after he popped into the young man's study, to the lasting detriment of a triolet. "We can prove it," he exclaimed. "Gad! We can prove it!" Graves regretfully dropped a blotter over his manuscript and advanced a chair. "I've suspected that there were men in this town who could lay Shelby by the heels, were they to tell all they knew. The problem was to draw them." "You can't expect his understrappers to quarrel with their bread and butter." "No; that has been the stone of stumbling precisely, but we've got around it. In this blessed case, Shelby himself did the quarrelling, and thereby delivered himself into our hands." Bernard Graves sat up. "What have you found out?" "I've found a man who seems to know of Shelby's crookedness, and is willing to tell what he knows." "Well?" "Jap Hinchey." Graves's face lengthened. "That beast," said he. "Did you expect a Sir Galahad for such a service?" "What would the word of such a man avail?" "As much as any informer's; it isn't a chivalrous office." "Nor is ours in employing it, to my thinking; informer and reformer sound perilously near alike. Still, as you delicately imply, we're not Knights of the Round Table. What has the sot had to say to you?" "Well, the fact is he hasn't told me anything specific," Sprague had to admit. "The matter is still under negotiation, as one may say. Jasper is coy." "Oh!" The lukewarm monosyllable voiced disillusionment. With a partial return to the academic calm of his normal life Bernard Graves candidly told himself that the actual basis of his resentment against Shelby was trivial; that the editor's outlook on politics was Quixotic, not to say Micawberesque; and that his own wisdom in venturing for such a cause, with such a pilot, on such uncharted seas, was questionable to a degree. Sprague was not devoid of intuition.