im and the thought-wheels demanded
tobacco. Kent fought it as long as he could, making sure that the
smoking-compartment liars' club would be in session; but when the demand
became a nagging insistence, he found his pipe and tobacco and went to the
men's room.

The little den behind the drawing-room had but one occupant besides the
rear-end brakeman---a tall, saturnine man in a gray grass-cloth duster who
was smoking a Porto Rican stogie. Kent took a second look and held out his
hand.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, Judge Marston. I was counting on three
hours of solitary confinement."

The lieutenant-governor acknowledged the hand-clasp, nodded, and made room
on the leather-covered divan for the new-comer. Hildreth, the editor of
the _Argus_, put it aptly when he said that the grim-faced old cattle king
had "blown" into politics. He was a compromise on the People's Party
ticket; was no part of the Bucks programme, and had been made to feel it.
Tradition had it that he had been a terror to the armed and organized
cattle thieves of the early days; hence the brevet title of "Judge." But
those that knew him best did not know that he had once been the brightest
man upon the Supreme Bench of his native state: this before failing health
had driven him into exile.

As a mixer, the capital had long since voted Oliver Marston a conspicuous
failure. A reticent, reserved man by temperament and habit, and with both
temperament and habit confirmed by his long exile on the cattle ranges, he
had grown rather less than more talkative after his latest plunge into
public life; and even Miss Van Brock confessed that she found him
impossible on the social side. None the less, Kent had felt drawn toward
him from the first; partly because Marston was a good man in bad company,
and partly because there was something remindful of the elder Kent in the
strong face, the slow smile and the introspective eye of the old man from
the hill country.

For a time the talk was a desultory monologue, with Kent doing his best to
keep it from dying outright. Later, when he was fairly driven in upon his
reserves, he began to speak of himself, and of the hopeless fight for
enlargement in the Trans-Western struggle. Marston lighted the
match-devouring stogie for the twentieth time, squared himself on the end
of the divan and listened attentively. At the end of the recounting he
said:

"It seems to be a failure of justice, Mr. Kent. Can you prove your