The young man, gazing at the rug, shook his round head. "No," he said, "not so large for you as its alternative." "And that? It is——" Rivington had put the question, but it was toward the man at the head of the table that Luke as he shot out his sudden reply, raised his eyes. "Jail," said Luke. "Do you mean to threaten us?" cried Rivington angrily. Hallett laughed. The man at the head of the table only smiled. "Not at all," said Luke. "I am merely stating a fact. In coming here, the only thing I hesitated about was whether it would be better for the people to have safe transportation immediately guaranteed or to have you three in jail." "You seem to forget, young man," said Hallett, "who it was elected the man that made you assistant district-attorney." Luke gave him the briefest of glances. "It was because I found out who elected him that I resigned the job," he answered. "I have just been offered the Municipal League’s nomination for District-Attorney. When _I_ am elected, it will be by the people." "That will be about 2000 A.D.," sneered Hallett. Luke shrugged his thin shoulders and returned his gaze toward the leader of the trio. "A bridge falls on one of your roads in this county," he said. "It kills twenty-five people and wounds a hundred—all passengers in one of your trains. You will say the state inspectors declared the bridge O.K. Maybe they did, though they ought to go to the electric chair for it. That doesn’t matter. What I can prove by thirty witnesses is that the train left the bridge before the bridge fell. A rail flattened and threw the train. Instead of sending you men to jail—and only because I think this is better for the safety of the public—I will give you one month to begin laying decent rails on this road—actually get _bona fide_ work under way. If you don’t do that, I’ll make public the whole truth, get you indicted, go into court as a witness and produce two letters, one forwarded to you and the other signed by you. The first of these is a letter to the president of the road written by the steel manufacturers; it warns him that the cheap rails he’s ordered are dangerous: that letter he sent to you. The second is a letter from you to the president of the road in which you say you want the poor-grade rails used because you don’t want to increase the running expenses, and you order a general keeping-down of the road’s expenses because of a plan for you three to unload your stock along about this December." Luke rose. He relapsed into the weary young man of ten minutes before. "You have one month," he said. He picked up his hat, rubbed it with a caressing hand, and left the room. The three that he left stared at one another. Then both Hallett and Rivington looked at their leader. "It’s an infamous—it must be an infamous lie!" cried Rivington. "Letters like that—men don’t write them!" Without moving a muscle of his face, the man at the head of the table looked at Rivington.