"No, Leslie, I can't," he told her at last. "Look at me!" she cried, now changing her tactics. "I haven't slept, I haven't eaten! Have you no pity for me--if not for him?" "But, Leslie, you're asking me to commit a crime!" "Just a stroke of the pen, dear, and my father will be free," she went on, half sobbing, half smiling. "It's his last chance--my last chance--surely you can't, you won't refuse me this." Then followed a scene that lived in Beekman's memory for ever after--the memory of a woman, the woman he loved, crawling after him on her knees, pleading, almost writhing in agony, imploring him to do this impossible thing--a thing that, were it not for his conscience, was so ridiculously easy: merely the exercising of the authority vested in him, and solely in him, and thus save the father of the woman he loved from serving a term of ten years at hard labour in the State's Prison. "Why was I ever Governor!" burst out Beekman. "I'll tell you why," said Wilkinson, striding suddenly into the room. "It's because I made you Governor, that's why! I--I bought you the job--I----" "You?" ejaculated Beekman. "Yes, it is true," said Flomerfelt, gliding also into the scene. "You owe it all to Peter V." "Now you've got to do it!" exclaimed Leslie, staggering to her feet. Beekman eyed them all with growing determination. He was beginning to see things clearly now. "I even gave you my daughter, confound you!" went on Wilkinson. Beekman turned back to his desk and stood there, calm now, desperately calm. "So you made me Governor just to get this pardon?" Flomerfelt started to speak, but Wilkinson was before him. "Yes," snarled Wilkinson, "just to get this pardon. Do you think for an instant that you were put here for any other reason? Or that you had any qualifications for the office?" Leslie laughed a discordant laugh, and Flomerfelt, seeing at once that the girl was in complete sympathy with her father, stepped back behind them. "There are many good reasons, Mr. Wilkinson," said the Governor, grimly, "Why you should not be pardoned. Needless to say you know what they are. But," he added fiercely, for he knew that he had been tricked, "if there were no other reason, the fact that you had put me here to secure your pardon would make it impossible for me to act." He stopped and stared at Leslie, his eyes unconsciously seeking hers for sympathy, but something there shocked him beyond measure, and before he was aware of what he was saying, he blurted out: "Did you give me your daughter for the same season? Did you, Leslie----" There was a deep silence in which the attention of all was focussed on the girl. "Mr. Beekman," she said, in a cold, hard voice, though her eyes were softly eager, "will you tell me once for all whether you're going to pardon my father?" "I certainly am not going to pardon him," declared Beekman. Leslie favoured him with a little stinging laugh.