"She might," he said, "but nobody else would. Governor, take it from me, that fellow's bad all the way through. And the crime that landed him here--a cold-blooded, brutal murder--it was an atrocious thing, utterly unprovoked. No mitigating circumstances whatsoever, just plain butchery. Governor, as your friend I beg you, don't be swept off your feet by any rush of misguided sentimentality for such a wretch. To turn him loose would kill you politically. You're in line to be our next United States Senator. Already they're saying over the country that you're Presidential timber. There's no telling how high or how far you'll go if only you don't make some fatal mistake. And this--this would be fatal. It would rouse the whole state against you. It would destroy you, not only with the party but with the people. You know what ruined your predecessor--he made too free a use of the pardoning power. Governor, if you let that man loose on society, you're wrecked." That night, back at the Executive Mansion, the bachelor governor slept not a wink. Was ever a man strung between the horns of a worse dilemma? Warden Riddle had been right. To open the prison doors for so infamous a creature as Wyeth was, would be damnation for all his ambitions. And Governor Blankenship was as ambitious as he was godly. And probably no more godly man ever lived. On the other hand, he had given his pledge to Wyeth. There was this about Governor Blankenship: he had been named for the father of his country--that man who could not tell a lie. And, wittingly, Governor Blankenship had never in all his blameless life told a lie either. To keep the faith with himself and the world, to wear truth like a badge shining upon his breast, had from boyhood been his dearest ideal. Off that course he never intentionally had departed. With him it was more than a code of ethics and more than a creed of personal conduct--it was the holiest of religions. He unreservedly believed that one guilty falsehood--just one--would consign his soul to the bottommost pit of perdition forever. Here was a real Sir Galahad, a perfect knight of perfect honor. Through days and weeks he walked between two invisible but ever-present mentors. One of them, whose name was Expediency, constantly tempted him. "You passed your word under duress and in mortal fear," Expediency whispered in his ear. "Let that man rot in his cell. 'Tis his just desert." But the other counselor, called Conscience, as repeatedly said to him: "You never told a lie. Can you tell one now?" In such grievous plight, he received a secret message, sent by underground from Wyeth. "I'm getting impatient," was Wyeth's word. "Are you, or are you not, going to come clean?" This enhanced his desperation. From sleeplessness, from gnawing worry he lost flesh. People about him said the noble young governor was not like himself any more. They predicted a breakdown unless he was cured of what hidden cause it was which distressed him.