The Henchman | Page 7

"I'll look for you to-morrow," he assured her.
"Don't strain your eyes," said the widow.
The Hon. Seneca Bowers passed her on the stairs. Greeting the lawyer,
he seated himself behind the clerk's back, with a meaning slant of his
Grant-like head.
Shelby understood. "Leave those notices of trial for the present,
William," he ordered, "and get this stipulation signed. If the man isn't in
his office, try the county clerk's."
Bowers pulled with clock-work precision at his cigar, while the boy
uncoiled his long legs from his chair, and with furtive little pats at his
necktie and fiery shock, made ready to go out. Shelby stumbled upon
the waste-paper basket as the door slammed at his clerk's heels, and

with vicious satisfaction he kicked it to the room's far end.
The caller's eyes twinkled.
"The Widow Weatherwax been administering spiritual balm?" he
asked.
"I could wring her neck," Shelby averred.
"Her will again?"
"Of course."
"You'll have it as long as you practise law. I did. It goes with the office.
Remunerative as ever?"
"Talk about 'benefit of clergy,'" exploded the younger man; "that
mediaeval bonanza isn't to be mentioned in the same week with the
ministerial half-rates, donations, and hold-ups we moderns put up with.
This pulpit pounder's shrew pays me no more than she pays the doctor,
the grocer, the butcher, and the rest. What a ukase I could issue if I
were Czar of these United States."
"Cousin Phoebe's 'sofy,' beloved Nephew Jason's unsalable dishes, and
Brother Henry's pickle-caster still extant?"
"Yes, yes," groaned Shelby.
"And little Ann Eliza's sheets and pillow-slips, I dare say. It's
astonishing how they endure."
"It's astonishing how I endure."
"You must--at any rate, till the Tuesday after the first Monday in
November. Did the pious gossip tell you any pleasant personal news?"
"She has heard talk that the Micks are sore and that Doc Crandall has
had an attack of virtue."

"You needn't lose sleep over the handful of Irish in our camp; they
know who butters their parsnips. And I'll take care of the doctor. He's
an innocuous mugwump. She didn't mention Volney Sprague?"
"Sprague," said Shelby, wearily; "what is that man up to now?"
Bowers rose, paced the room, and returned, big with news.
"The Whig has bolted," he announced.
CHAPTER IV
Shelby's amaze spent its force in an oath. In a moment he asked,
calmly:--
"What does he say?"
"Not much; mainly that the manner of your nomination debars his
printing your name at the head of his editorial page."
"Endorses the rest of our party ticket, doesn't he?"
"Yes; it's a personal bolt."
Shelby ruminated earnestly.
"It's only a one-horse country daily," he declared finally. "The Whig!
You'd think Henry Clay still above ground."
"Strikes you that way, does it?" Bowers emitted with a cloud of smoke.
"Why, yes. You don't consider such a paper dangerous?"
"All newspapers are dangerous in politics; there's none too mean to
have its following. The Whig has influence."
"It's a one-horse paper," reiterated Shelby.
"M-yes; it is a slow coach," Bowers admitted; "but it suits a lot of

people. They respect it because it keeps the old name and jogs along in
the old gait it had under Volney's father before him. It's been a stanch
party paper, too, and that without soliciting a dollar's worth of public
advertising or political pap of any description. The Whig doesn't often
kick over the traces. The Greeley campaign was its last bolt."
"Well, the milk's spilt," said Shelby, with strenuous cheerfulness;
"we've one reason the more to make next week's ratification meeting a
rousing success. What did you think of our little welcome at the club
last night?"
Bowers grinned.
"Mrs. Hilliard managed it first-class," he said; "but I felt cheap when
we came in."
"So did I. The scheme seemed a good one when she suggested it, but
when it came right down to pulling it off I would have sold out for
thirty cents on the dollar. It takes lovely woman to do those things. She
has her uses in politics, eh?"
"M-yes," Bowers answered in half assent; "but she's an uncertain
quantity. Like grandsire's musket, she's as likely to kill behind as
before."
The vine-screened window in which they now talked overlooked the
neighboring Temple house, a dignified sentry at the point where the
leisured street forsook the chaffer of the town to climb amidst arching
elms and maples, above whose gaudy autumn masses rose the dome of
the courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an
old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against
its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its
glory waning with the summer, lifted its showy clusters from an urn;
while walk and carriage drive alike sauntered to the