e my safe. That is past and gone;
but you can see where it left me. As you and everybody in the State
know, I had been committing myself publicly everywhere, doing it with
the assurance that when it came to the pinch I could bring Gantry and
Kittredge and even Mr. McVickar himself to terms--the terms of honesty
and fair dealing. With my weapon stolen, I was left helpless, facing the
certainty that on the day after the election I should be pilloried in
every hole and corner of my native State as the most shameless liar that
ever breathed. Do you wonder that I was desperate?"

"No, son; I reckon you wouldn't have been much of a Blount if you hadn't
been."

"I was desperate. I said to myself that I would find another weapon,
even if I should have to take a leaf out of your own book, dad, to do
it. I took the leaf, and I have the weapon. You drove Gryson away, but
you made one small miscalculation. You didn't believe that his desire
for revenge would be stronger than his fear of the gallows."

Again the older man nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, son; I know. He came back twice: once when he found you in your
office last Wednesday night; and again yesterday, or rather last
evening, when you got out of your bed and went to help him make his
getaway on the east-bound Overland."

Evan Blount started back, and his exclamation was of pure astoundment.

"You knew all this?" he gasped.

"Oh, yes; I reckon there isn't much happening that such a double-dyed
old villain as I am doesn't find out, Evan," was the sober rejoinder.

"But, good heavens! if you know so much, you must know what Gryson came
back for, and what he gave me!"

"Yes; I know that, too. I reckon I might as well make a clean breast of
it while I'm at it."

"You knew it last night, and yet you didn't send somebody to hold me up
and take the papers away from me?"

The senator's chuckle rumbled deep in his mighty chest.

"Maybe I was counting a little on the kinship, Evan, boy. Maybe I was
saying to myself: 'No, I reckon the boy won't do it, after all--not when
he reads what's set down in the papers; he just naturally couldn't do
it.'"

"Oh, my Lord, dad!" was the choking response. "Can't you see that you
are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between
being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of
those I have been denouncing? My God, it's terrible!"

"I reckon you're going to choose straight," said the older m