"Fiddlesticks," interrupted the colonel. "You'll do what I say. I never felt any stronger in my life. It's all a matter of being able to breathe easier with this splintered rib. That won't bother me more than a few days. Then they can't hold me back." Flatly Gov. Johnson informed Col. Roosevelt that he wanted to stay in the fight. "I'm needed," he went on. "I'm going to let them take the governorship. I'll resign." Leaning out from the arm chair in which he sat, Roosevelt whacked his right fist down on the table before him. A sharp pain went through the breast pierced by the bullet. "I tell you, governor, you'll not do it," fairly cried the colonel, so vehemently that Mrs. Roosevelt, in the next room, stepped to the doorway. "You must be quiet, Theodore," spoke Mrs. Roosevelt, lifting a warning finger. "Yes, that's right," agreed the colonel, "but the governor here is recalcitrant and I've got to speak roughly to him." After a brisk interchange of opinion as to the feasibility of the governor giving up the campaign the two violently taking opposite sides, bidding the colonel an affectionate good-bye, Gov. Johnson left the hospital. As he passed out to an automobile, Johnson said he had promised the colonel to talk the matter over with other leaders before deciding what to do. "He insists that I return to California and I insist I won't," explained the governor. "We couldn't agree." Later Gov. Johnson conferred at his hotel with William Allen White, Francis J. Heney and other Bull Moose leaders. The governor was obdurate in his decision to stick in the race. "Col. Roosevelt is in no shape to take up the responsibility," he maintained. "It is but an evidence of his magnanimity that he urges me to return to California. I'd rather lost the job than desert the colonel now." Attorney General U. S. Webb of California on October 20 issued the following opinion, however, which did away with possibility of Gov. Johnson losing his office: [Illustration: Elbert E. Martin.] "There is a code section in the state limiting the absence of the governor and other officials from the state to sixty days, but the legislature of 1911 by resolution, removed the limitations on the governor and other high state officials. In addition to that the constitution of the United States specifically provides the conditions under which a state official may be removed, and it does not include this particular condition. There is no reason why Gov. Johnson cannot remain outside the state as long as he sees fit and there is nothing the legislature can do to remove him for remaining away more than sixty days." CHAPTER VII. BACK AT SAGAMORE HILL. The trip of ex-President Roosevelt from Mercy Hospital, Chicago, to his home at Oyster Bay, beginning the morning of October 21 over the Pennsylvania road is described here by one of the correspondents who traveled with him. Under date of October 21, he wrote at Pittsburg, Pa.: