His expert shrewdly foresaw that another defeat for the people was to be the result of this policy. "I objected very strenuously," he says. "It was my pet scheme to examine them orally in court or by commission, and I gave it up very reluctantly. I told the Attorney-General I could not believe those gentlemen were in earnest, that I knew I could ask a string of questions of any one of them which if answered would have given the case away to the State."[320] But the Attorney-General, the same who as counsel for the people, in 1879, against the members of the same corporation, led his clients to defeat, overruled him. The old campaigner saw the mistake of 1880 about to be repeated, and an agreement with the offenders substituted for trial and for the defeat of them he believed would follow. He determined to prevent the consummation of this second catastrophe. He sent his counsel to New York to the headquarters of the oil combination with a notice that he would not adhere to the bargain made by the Attorney-General at Harrisburg with reference to "the agreement of facts." "I propose to attack," was the message he sent.[321] He was to have received compensation from the State. He believed that this gave him an interest in the matter sufficient to gain a footing in the courts for action by himself independently of the Attorney-General. In pursuance of this idea, when the case came up for trial, he appeared with his private counsel ready to take part in the proceedings if permitted. The notice of attack was received "with surprise," but was met with a characteristic move. "I raised the question with him"--the counsel--"as to what possible motive" his client "had in the matter," the "trustee" testifies, "and as to whether it would not be better for him to desist from it; whether it would not be possible for us, if he was needing business, to find some position in which he could legitimately earn a living."[322] The lawyer replied that he had no right to treat on any such basis, and withdrew from all connection with the case. But this was the opening of a negotiation which through another lawyer "resulted," as the expert of the State afterwards confessed, "in peace between us." He had given notice that he meant to attack, and the "negotiation" which followed "was whether anybody would give me as much as there was in my contract with the State if I would not attack."[323]