"Yes; I know. But there is more to follow. The stock-smashing plan was all right, but it is proving too slow. Now they are going to do something else." "Can you give it a name?" asked Kent, nerving himself. "I can. But first tell me one thing: as matters stand, could Guilford dispose of the road--sell it or lease it?" "No; he would first have to be made permanent receiver and be given authority by the court." "Ah! that explains Judge MacFarlane's return. Now what I am going to tell you is the deadest of secrets. It came to me from one of the Overland officials, and I'm not supposed to gossip. Did you know the Overland Short Line had passed under Plantagould domination?" "I know they elected a Plantagould directory at the annual meeting." "Exactly. Well, Guilford 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.