"They've taken a fall out of us," was the brusk reply. "House Bill Twenty-nine was reported by the committee on judiciary and rushed through after you left. Somebody engineered it to the paring of a fingernail: bare quorum to act; members who might have filibustered weeded out, on one pretext or another, to a man; pages all excused, and nobody here with the privilege of the floor. It was as neat a piece of gag-work as I ever hope to see if I live to be a hundred." Kent faced about and joined the townward dispersal with his informant. "Well, I suppose that settles it definitely; at least, until we can test its constitutionality in the courts," he said. Harnwicke thought not, being of the opinion that the vested interests would never say die until they were quite dead. As assistant counsel for the Overland Short Line, he was in some sense the dean of the corps of observation, and could speak with authority. "There is one chance left for us this side of the courts," he went on; "and now I think of it, you are the man to say how much of a chance it is. The bill still lacks the governor's signature." Kent shook his head. "It is his own measure. I have proof positive that he and Meigs and Hendricks drafted it. And all this fine-haired engineering to-night was his, or Meigs'." "Of course; we all know that. But we don't know the particular object yet. Do they need the new law in their business as a source of revenue? Or do they want to be hired to kill it? In other words, does Bucks want a lump sum for a veto? You know the man better than any of us." "By Jove!" said Kent. "Do you mean to say you would buy the governor of a state?" Harnwicke turned a cold eye on his companion as they strode along. He was of the square-set, plain-spoken, aggressive type--a finished product of the modern school of business lawyers. "I don't understand that you are raising the question of ethics at this stage of the game, do I?" he remarked. Kent fired up a little. "And if I am?" he retorted. "I should say you had missed your calling. It is baldly a question of business--or rather of self-preservation. We needn't mince matters among ourselves. If Bucks is for sale, we buy him." Kent shrugged. "There isn't any doubt about his purchasability. But I confess I don't quite see how you will go about it." "Never mind that part of it; just leave the ways and means with those of us who have riper experience--and fewer hamperings, perhaps--than you have. Your share in it is to tell us how big a bid we must make. As I say, you know the man." David Kent was silent for the striding of half a square. The New England conscience dies hard, and while it lives it is given to drawing sharp lines on all the boundaries of culpability. Kent ended by taking the matter in debate violently out of the domain of ethics and standing it upon the ground of expediency.