agent: "I guess I won't see you
again."

"I hope not," answered the other.

"Tut, tut, Presley, you know you can't make me angry."

He put on his hat of varnished straw and wiped his fat forehead with
his handkerchief. Of late, he had grown fatter than ever, and the linen
vest, stamped with a multitude of interlocked horseshoes, strained tight
its imitation pearl buttons across the great protuberant stomach.

Presley looked at the man a moment before replying.

But a few weeks ago he could not thus have faced the great enemy of the
farmers without a gust of blind rage blowing tempestuous through all his
bones. Now, however, he found to his surprise that his fury had
lapsed to a profound contempt, in which there was bitterness, but no
truculence. He was tired, tired to death of the whole business.

"Yes," he answered deliberately, "I am going away. You have ruined this
place for me. I couldn't live here where I should have to see you, or
the results of what you have done, whenever I stirred out of doors."

"Nonsense, Presley," answered the other, refusing to become angry.
"That's foolishness, that kind of talk; though, of course, I understand
how you feel. I guess it was you, wasn't it, who threw that bomb into my
house?"

"It was."

"Well, that don't show any common sense, Presley," returned S. Behrman
with perfect aplomb. "What could you have gained by killing me?"

"Not so much probably as you have gained by killing Harran and Annixter.
But that's all passed now. You're safe from me." The strangeness of this
talk, the oddity of the situation burst upon him and he laughed aloud.
"It don't seem as though you could be brought to book, S. Behrman, by
anybody, or by any means, does it? They can't get at you through the
courts,--the law can't get you, Dyke's pistol missed fire for just your
benefit, and you even escaped Caraher's six inches of plugged gas pipe.
Just what are we going to do with you?"

"Best give it up, Pres, my boy," returned the other. "I guess there
ain't anything can touch me. Well, Magnus," he said, turning once more
to the Governor. "Well, I'll think over what you say, and let you know
if I can get the place for you in a day or two. You see," he added,
"you're getting pretty old, Magnus Derrick."

Presley flung himself from the room, unable any longer to witness the
depths into which Magnus had fallen. What other scenes of degradation
were enacted in that room, how much further S. Behrman