Neither the public nor the honorable body to which it was directly addressed took the new governor's message stressing general retrenchment and the pruning of useless offices seriously. Nothing in the recent course of the party wooed faith in its promises to purge and live cleanly, and the accident of a huge majority in the late elections, owing to national issues, had set not a few mouths watering for fruits of victory which had lately dangled out of reach. The machine was perfected to its utmost, and the young year was held to signalize the full flowering of the Boss's topping supremacy. The great man was now master of the county committees of the metropolis and the greater cities; of the State Committee; of the Legislature, of the lieutenant-governor, and apparently of Shelby. The cartoons depicted the chief executive as a craven monarch yielding his sceptre to the leering power behind the throne; as a marionette twitched by obvious wires; as a muzzled dog, ticketed with the Boss's name.

Whereupon Shelby, in a quiet way, did an audacious thing. By an odd chance the first enactment of the Legislature which reached his desk affected Tuscarora County. It was a general measure concerning marsh lands, philanthropically worded and fathered by an assemblyman from an eastern county; but its special purpose, as Shelby fathomed, was to give certain Tuscarora people a selfish advantage in a locality as familiar to him as his hand. The Swamp, as Tuscarora called it, embodied his boyhood notion of primeval nature, the one spot untamed amidst tilled and retilled commonplaceness, the last fastness and abiding-place of the unknown. Rude corduroy roads threaded the wilderness in parts, and from this Red-Sea sort of passage the lad had peered and questioned in delicious fear. Even now the man had but to shut his eyes to recall it with the senses of the boy. Cowslip, wood violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit bloomed again, the scent of mint was in his nostrils, fairy lakes lured amidst the ferns, and the way wound through lofty halls whose wonderful pillars set foot in emerald pools and sprang in vaulting hung high with wild grape. Once in those tender years he had skirted the spot by night when owls hooted, unnatural frogs boomed, will-o'-the-wisp stalked abroad, and Old Mystery held carnival; that breathless experience almost outdid the delights by day. All this issued from the phraseology of a bill—this, and something more. He held the measure a day or two and invited its sponsors, ostensible and real, to a conference. They were trained legislators, with whom he had served and fraternized, and in this matter furthered the interests of men in his native county who had backed him from the beginning of his career.

"Gentlemen," he said, regarding them quizzically, "this bill reminds me of a Tuscarora story." They laughed at the familiar beginning, and the governor laughed with them. "It's about a man who ran a grist-mill on a creek fed by a certain swamp, which I guess you know about. He was easy-going, the water was often too low for grinding, and the little mill had business for six, since there wasn't a rival within thirty miles. The pioneers came prepared to camp when they brought grist, and I suppose loafed around pitching quoits and cursing the mill trust by whatever name they called a monopoly then. One day along came a cute boy astride a mule with two bags of grain. He sized up the crowd ahead of him as he carried in his grist, and decided that if he waited his turn the country would grow up without him. The miller happened to be tinkering his water-wheel, so the boy got his bags into a dark corner unobserved, and with a handful of mill dust gave his work the finishing touch of ripe old age. I dare say you think he took the man in, but he didn't. 'Bub,' said the miller, 'I used to do that trick myself.'"

Shelby's old associates in log-rolling took the unmasking good-naturedly, but declined the amendment he suggested. He dismissed them with charming civility, jotted a laconic memorandum that the bill meditated a raid on public property for private gain, and with the calm of a gardener lopping a weed, withheld his signature.

It were hard to say whose smart was shrewder, the spoilsmen's who mourned the backsliding of a pal, or the professional reformers' who chewed the galling fact that not one of the elect, but a practical politician, had done this creditable thing. Both joined forces to fling clods. In the greater world, however, Shelby's simple act won swift approval. In the cartoonists' fancy the wires of the puppet-show had gone awry, the dog bit the heel at which it slunk, the usurper's knuckles were rapped by the sceptre he would have seized. The press teemed with anecdotes and personal gossip of the governor. Everything he did or said became of interest: his dress, his habits of work, his Tuscarora stories, his domestic life. An admirer on Long Island who bred bulldogs sent him a white pup trained to answer to the name of "Veto." Triplets in the valley of the Susquehanna were christened "Calvin," "Ross," and "Shelby," respectively.

During this time no word passed between Shelby and the Boss. The leader had not witnessed the inaugural ceremonies. Indeed, he had not attended the inauguration of a governor since his party regained control of the state. He and the governor-elect had lunched together frequently, however, and in concord discussed the forthcoming message and the party policy of the incoming Legislature. With two years of common work and intimacy behind them, they felt slight need of explanations. The machine as it stood was of their joint perfecting. Accordingly, the Boss viewed the cartoons with his habitual serenity, noted that a fund of good will was accruing to the party through the personal popularity of the new executive, and smilingly assured the reporters, who scented a quarrel, that Shelby was the right man in the right place. He found no thorn in a special message reminding the fortnight-old Legislature that, with the chief financial measures yet untouched, the bills already introduced called for the outlay of millions; nor did the speedy pruning of several sinecures, one of which was held by that tried veteran, Jacob Krantz, dash his cheery confidence. Krantz and the ousted were quietly found corporate business openings of glittering promise, and the campaign slogans were proved no mere catch-vote generalities.

Meanwhile the ancient city of Albany privily assorted its impressions of Shelby's wife, and awaited the dictum of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam. Although it was by deeds, rather than speech, that she made her judgments public, Mrs. Van Dam among her intimates did not deny herself the luxury of a stout opinion vigorously expressed.

"Mrs. Shelby's a fool," asserted the old lady in her positive way to Canon North, "but, after all, one of our own church people and the governor's wife."

"Either claim is weighty," smiled North; "tenderness for the family skeleton, respect for the state. United they're irresistible." For a social autocrat the canon took his position simply. Indeed he would have been rather astonished to learn that he was anything of the kind. "But the governor—he's genuine," he continued musingly; "I'm drawn to the man. He seems to me a power to be reckoned with—presidential timber, perhaps. Of course all our governors are heirs apparent by virtue of their office; but unlike so many of them, he isn't of a stature to be dwarfed by the suggestion. I think him rather Lincolnesque in a way, though I don't press the comparison. Perhaps it's merely his smile—have you noticed it?—the 'sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men' that Amiel tells us is the badge of the misunderstood."

"Pshaw!" returned Mrs. Van Dam. "I've known two or three great men who wore sad smiles. When a disordered liver wasn't at the bottom of it 'twas the wife."

North gave over the argument.

"Nobody would impeach Shelby's liver," he laughed. "He's as robust as a patent medicine witness after taking."

"Oh, I don't accuse Mrs. Shelby," rejoined Mrs. Van Dam, quickly. "The governor's smile isn't the issue. One and one don't make one in the state of matrimony any more than elsewhere on the globe, and whether he and his wife agree or disagree doesn't interest me in the slightest. What does concern me is the important fact that the mistress of the executive mansion of the great state of New York appears not to know certain things she ought, chief among them the true character of ex-Senator Ludlow."

"I'm afraid it's true," owned the canon.

"Before Ruth Graves left I suggested that she intercede. She has tact, knows the Shelbys well, and had received an invitation to visit them. But she declined visit, intercession, and all. I'm sorry. Somebody must speak to Mrs. Shelby, and an old acquaintance could carry off such a mission with better grace."

"Why didn't Graves come on with his wife?" inquired the canon, irrelevantly.

"Don't mention the simpleton! I've no patience with him—or with Ruth for marrying him. We never can see the reason for other people's marriages, but that one above all others was incomprehensible. If ever a woman needed to marry a dynamo to bring out her best it was Ruth Temple. And she married Bernard Graves—a man who has degenerated into a poseur before women's clubs. Marriages made in heaven indeed! Give me Darwin and natural selection."

"You really have something of the kind," laughed North. "She was a free agent, his plumage evidently attracted in the old, old way, and so she made her choice."

"Fiddlesticks! Don't tell me that she made a fool of herself of her own free will. That man isn't capable of stirring the emotions of a poster girl with orange skin and purple hair, let alone a flesh and blood woman. Something outside herself—don't laugh; I'm a woman and I know—somebody, not Graves himself, bred that folly. If she were another sort of nature, I'd say she married for spite; but she—"

"For respite, perhaps—respite from herself. I've known cases. But we're far afield from the Shelbys. Shall I approach the governor?"

"No," said Mrs. Van Dam, with decision. "The wife is the one to see, if I know anything of women, and this is a woman's task; I, clearly, am the instrument, and shall not shirk."

"You would have made an eminent surgeon," remarked North, with his slow smile.

The unflinching Good Samaritan selected an hour two days later when the governor's wife was likely to be alone, and sent up her card. Not a few women had sighed for a sight of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's calling card, and sighed in vain; but Cora Shelby, who had heard of these yearnings, thanked her God that she was not as other women are, and glanced at the pasteboard with indifference.

"Yes; I suppose I'm at home," she said languidly, posturing for the maid, and for a full half-hour left the august visitor waiting below stairs while she turned the pages of a novel.

The influence of Mrs. Tommy Kidder had determined this petty course. This sprightly young person, being herself a real social force, shared little of the awe in which Mrs. Teunis Van Dam was held by most of her townsfolk and by all newcomers, and Cora, with her own ideas of the part which she, as the governor's wife, should play, had taken Mrs. Tommy's frothy nonsense at rather more than its surface value. She was more than ever alive to Mrs. Van Dam's importance—her grandson, the military secretary, was an ever present reminder; but she cherished a quickened sense of her own importance, too, and was vigilantly alert to withstand any sign or symptom of what Mrs. Tommy called "Knickerbocker domination."

Her first shaft, however, fell wide of the mark. Mrs. Van Dam serenely assumed that her tardy hostess meant to pay her the compliment of a more elaborate toilet, and employed the interval in an interested survey of the changes wrought in the reception room's arrangement by its new mistress. So absorbing did she find this occupation, that she utterly missed the glacial temperature of Cora's greeting.

"I must congratulate you on resurrecting that bit of mahogany," declared the old lady, indicating a table. "I've missed that piece for three administrations. Wherever did you find it?"

"Really, I can't remember," fibbed Cora, resolving straightway to banish it.

The military secretary had suggested its restoration, and she jumped to the conclusion that he had been inspired by his grandmother.

"It's a real link with the past," added Mrs. Van Dam, with a far-away look in her eyes. "I can recall it as long ago as Governor Tilden's time."

The great Mrs. Van Dam's cordiality thawed Cora in spite of herself, and she was well in the way of unconditional surrender to her charm when the caller cut straight into the pith of her errand.

"Without beating about the bush, my dear," she began, "I'm here on a meddlesome business which you mustn't take amiss. As an old woman who has seen something of the world in general, and much of this queer little Albany corner of it in particular, you must permit me to tell you that you have been too generously lenient with a person who has forfeited the right to darken decent people's doors. I mean ex-Senator Ludlow; and I presume I needn't specify his misdeeds."

"No. You need not," rejoined Cora, stiffening. "I'm not interested in scandal."

Mrs. Teunis Van Dam straightened rigidly in her chair.

"I fear that, after all, I must particularize," she replied.
"Obviously you can't know the truth of things."

"I know that his wife divorced him, and I have heard a dozen or more malicious tales about his present life. I doubt if you can add to the collection."

"You put me in a false position."

"And you reflect on mine in assuming to dictate whom I shall receive.
This house belongs to the state. Every citizen is welcome."

Mrs. Van Dam had gathered her furs and risen, but at this she paused.

"There," she exclaimed, with a little laugh, "what women we are! I've been talking of one thing, you of another. You have the right view of your official obligations precisely. Of course the man is free to come to your public receptions. The state can't establish a moral quarantine, more's the pity."

"Ex-Senator Ludlow is free to come to my house at all times," cut in Cora, with a brilliant crimson dot in either cheek. "I do not sit in pharisaical judgment on the unfortunate. I've had his story as well as that of you who are against him. I believe him a misjudged man who deserves a courageous friend."

"Oh, if it is a question of friendship—" and Mrs. Van Dam terminated sentence and interview with a shrug.

Yet Cora had not seen the last of her visitor's stately back before she repented her open championship of Handsome Ludlow. Knickerbocker domination, not conviction, had forced her hand. Since she had hung her banner on the walls, however, she resolved to stand fast, and the following Sunday morning issued an unmistakable declaration of war. On her way to service she saw Ludlow crossing the park before the capitol, and stopped her carriage.

"'Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd,'" quoted the man, his handsome, impudent eyes on hers.

"I propose that you'll do that for yourself," Cora retorted archly.
"Get in."

She had intended going to the cathedral, but withal sudden resolve she ordered the carriage driven to an older church just at hand, which time out of mind had made special provision for the head of the state, down whose central aisle she marshalled Ludlow, and installed him in the governor's pew.