ver, Kent flung
away the broken cigar and lighted a fresh one.

"That was a very primitive expedient, your Excellency, to say the best of
it," he remarked. "Have you nothing better to offer?"

The reply was a wild-beast growl, and taking it for a negative, Kent went
on.

"Then perhaps you will listen to my proposal. The papers you are so
anxious about are here,"--tapping the envelope on the table. "No, don't
try to snatch them; you wouldn't get out of here alive with them, lacking
my leave. Such of them as relate to your complicity in the Universal Oil
deal are yours--on one condition; that your health fails and you get
yourself ordered out of the State for the remainder of your term."

"No!" thundered the governor.

"Very well; you may stay and take a course of home treatment, if you
prefer. It's optional."

"By God! I don't know what keeps me from throttling you with my hands!"
Bucks got upon his feet, and Kent rose, also, slipping the box envelope
into his pocket and laying a precautionary hand on the drawer-pull.

The governor turned away and walked to the window, nursing his burned
fingers. When he faced about it was to return to the charge.

"Kent, what is it you want? Say it in two words."

"Candidly, I didn't know, until a few minutes ago, Governor. It began with
a determination to break your grip on my railroad, I believe."

"You can have your railroad, if you can get it--and be damned to it, and
to you, too!"

"I said it began that way. My sole idea in gathering up this evidence
against you and your accomplices was to whittle out a club that would make
you let go of the Trans-Western. For two weeks I have been debating with
myself as to whether I should buy you or break you; and half an hour
before you came, I went to the bank and took these papers out, meaning to
go and hunt you up."

"Well?" said the governor, and the word bared his teeth because his lips
were dry.

"I thought I knew, in the old Gaston days, how many different kinds of a
scoundrel you could be, but you've succeeded in showing me some new
variations in the last few minutes. It's a thousand pities that the people
of a great State should be at the mercy of such a gang of pirates as you
and Hendricks and Meigs and MacFarlane, and----"

"Break it off!" said Bucks.

"I'm through. I was merely going to add' that I have concluded not to buy
you."

"Then it's to be war to the knife, is it?"

"That is about the size of it," said