th.

"You are joking on the edge of your grave, my young friend. I taught you
in Gaston that you were not big enough to fight me: do you think you are
big enough now?"

"I don't think; I know," said Kent, incisively. "And since you have
referred to the Gaston days: let me ask if I ever gave you any reason to
believe that I could be scared out?"

"Keep to the point," retorted Bucks, harshly. "This State isn't broad
enough to hold you and me on opposite sides of the fence. I could make it
too hot to hold you without mixing up in it myself, but I choose to fight
my own battles. Will you take twenty thousand dollars spot cash, and
MacFarlane's job as circuit judge when I'm through with him? Yes or no."

"No."

"Then what will you take?"

"Without committing myself in any sense, I might say that you are getting
off too cheaply on your most liberal proposition. You and your friends
have looted a seventy-million-dollar railroad, and----"

"You might have stood in on that if you had taken Guilford's offer," was
the brusk rejoinder. "There was more than a corporation lawyer's salary in
sight, if you'd had sense enough to see it."

"Possibly. But I stayed out--and I am still out."

"Do you want to get in? Is that your price?"

"I intend to get in--though not, perhaps, in the way you have in mind. Are
you ready to recall Judge MacFarlane with instructions to give us our
hearing on the merits?"

The governor's face was wooden when he said:

"Is that all you want? I understand MacFarlane is returning, and you will
doubtless have your hearing in due season."

"Not unless you authorize it," Kent objected.

"And if I do? If I say that I have already done so, will you come in and
lay down your arms?"

"No."

"Then I'm through. Give me your key and write me an order on the Security
Bank for those papers you are holding."

"No," said Kent, again.

"I say _yes_!" came the explosive reassertion; and Kent found himself
looking down the bright barrel of a pistol thrust into his face across the
table.

For a man who had been oftenest an onlooker on the football half of life,
Kent was measurably quick and resourceful. In one motion he clamped the
weapon and turned it aside; in another he jammed the fire end of his cigar
among the fingers of the grasping hand. The governor jerked free with an
oath, pain-extorted; and Kent dropped the captured weapon into the table
drawer. It was all done in two breaths, and when it was o