"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 over, Kent flung away the broken cigar and lighted a fresh one. "That was a very primitive expedient, your Excellency, to say the best of it," he remarked. "Have you nothing better to offer?" The reply was a wild-beast growl, and taking it for a negative, Kent went on. "Then perhaps you will listen to my proposal. The papers you are so anxious about are here,"--tapping the envelope on the table. "No, don't try to snatch them; you wouldn't get out of here alive with them, lacking my leave. Such of them as relate to your complicity in the Universal Oil deal are yours--on one condition; that your health fails and you get yourself ordered out of the State for the remainder of your term." "No!" thundered the governor. "Very well; you may stay and take a course of home treatment, if you prefer. It's optional."