'll back you to
win, yet."

Kent shook his head unhopefully.

"Don't mistake me," he said. "I am fighting for the pure love of it, and
not with any great hope of saving the stock-holders. These grafters have
us by the nape of the neck. We can't make a move till MacFarlane comes
back and gives us a hearing on the merits. That may not be till the next
term of court. Meanwhile, the temporary receiver is to all intents and
purposes a permanent receiver; and the interval would suffice to wreck a
dozen railroads."

"And still you won't give up?"

"No."

"I hope you won't have to. But to a man up a tree it looks very much like
a dead cock in the pit. As I have said, if there is any backing to do, I'm
with you, first, last, and all the time, merely from a sportsman's
interest in the game. But is there any use in a little handful of us
trying to buck up against a whole state government?"

The coffee had been served, and Kent dropped a lump of sugar into his cup.

"Ormsby, I'll never let go while I'm alive enough to fight," he said
slowly. "One decent quality I have--and the only one, perhaps: I don't
know when I'm beaten. And I'll down this crowd of political plunderers
yet, if Bucks doesn't get me sand-bagged."

His listener pushed back his chair.

"If you stood to lose anything more than your job I could understand it,"
he commented. "As it is, I can't. Any way you look at it, your stake in
the game isn't worth the time and effort it will take to play the string
out. And I happen to know you're ambitious to do things--things that
count."

"What is it you don't understand--the motive?"

"That's it."

Kent laughed.

"You are not as astute as Miss Van Brock. She pointed it out to me last
night--or thought she did--in two words."

Ormsby's eyes darkened, and he did not affect to misunderstand.

"It would be a grand-stand play," he said half-musingly, "if you should
happen to worry it through, I mean. I believe Mrs. Hepzibah would be ready
to fall on your neck and forgive you, and turn me down." Then,
half-jestingly: "Kent, what will you take to drop this thing permanently
and go away?"

David Kent's smile showed his teeth.

"The one thing you wouldn't be willing to give. You asked me once when we
had fallen over the fence upon this forbidden ground if I were satisfied,
and I told you I wasn't. Do we understand each other?"

"I guess so," said Ormsby. "But--Say, Kent, I like you too well to see you
go up ag