Those hoarse, significant words wakened like the thrill of an electric shock--wakened to an understanding of the strength of "special interests" that were opposed to us--and wakened in me, too, the anger of a determination to fight to a finish. The Powers that had "fixed" our juries, were now fixing Legislature. They had laughed at us in the courts; they were going to laugh at us in the Capitol! Speaker Smith came lumbering out. He was a heavily built man, with a big jaw. And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt--lowering his head like a bull--as if he were saying to himself: "What! That d---- little devil! I'll bet he heard me!" But he did not speak. And neither did I. He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had heard. When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby. Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was "reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the session to death. Smith fumed and blustered, but Gardener, with the blood in his face, out-blustered and out-fumed him. The Speaker, later in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist. But he had to allow the bill to come up, and it was finally passed, with very little opposition--for reasons which I was afterward to understand. It had yet to be signed by the Speaker; and it had to be signed before the close of the session or it could not become a law. I heard rumours that some anti-corporation bills were going to be "lost" by the Chief Clerk, so that they might not be signed; and I kept my eye on him. He was a fat-faced, stupid-looking, flabby creature--by name D. H. Dickason--who did not appear capable of doing anything very daring. I saw the chairman of the Enrolling Committee place our bill on Dickason's desk, among those waiting for the Speaker's signature; and--while the House was busy--I withdrew it from the pile and placed it to one side, conspicuously, so that I could see it from a distance.