uilford is going to lease the Trans-Western to its
competitor for a term of ninety-nine years. That's your death sentence."

Kent sprang to his feet, and what he said is unrecordable. He was not a
profane man, but the sanguine temperament would assert itself explosively
in moments of sudden stress.

"When is this thing to be done?" he demanded, when the temperamental gods
were appeased a little.

Hildreth shrugged.

"I have told you all I could, and rather more than I had any right to.
Open the door behind you, won't you? The air is positively sulphurous."

Kent opened the door, entirely missing the point of the sarcasm in his
heat.

"But you must have some idea," he insisted.

"I haven't; any more than the general one that they won't let the grass
grow under their feet."

"No. God blast the whole--I wish I could swear in Sanscrit. The
mother-tongue doesn't begin to do justice to it. Now I know what Bucks
meant when he told me to take my railroad, _if I could get it_. He had the
whole thing coopered up in a barrel at that minute."

"I take it you have no alternative to this," said the editor, tapping the
pile of affidavits.

"Not a cursed shred of an idea! And, Hildreth--" he broke off short
because once again the subject suddenly grew too large for coherent
speech.

Hildreth disentangled himself from the legs of his chair and stood up to
put his hands on Kent's shoulders.

"You are up against it hard, David," he said; and he repeated: "I'd give
all my old shoes to be able to help you out."

"I know it," said Kent; and then he turned abruptly and went away.

Between nine and ten o'clock the same evening Kent was walking the floor
of his room, trying vainly to persuade himself that virtue was its own
reward, and wondering if a small dose of chloral hydrate would be
defensible under the cruel necessity for sleep. He had about decided in
favor of the drug when a tap at the door announced the coming of a
bell-boy with a note. It was a message from Portia.

"If you have thrown away your chance definitely, and are willing to take a
still more desperate one, come to see me," she wrote; and he went
mechanically, as a drowning man catches at a straw, knowing it will not
save him.

The house in Alameda Square was dark when he went up the walk; and while
he was feeling for the bell-push his summoner called to him out of the
electric stencilings of leaf shadows under the broad veranda.

"It is too fine a night