Bucks made it promptly.

“Ten thousand dollars:  and you promise to leave the State and stay away for one year from the first Tuesday in November next.”

“That is, until after the next State election.”  Kent blew a whiff of smoke to the ceiling and shook his head slowly.  “It is not enough.”

The governor uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way, and said: 

“I’ll make it twenty thousand and two years.”

“Or thirty thousand and three years,” Kent suggested amiably.  “Or suppose we come at once to the end of that string and say one hundred thousand and ten years.  That would still leave you a fair price for your block of suburban property in Guilford and Hawk’s addition to the city of Gaston, wouldn’t it?”

The governor set his massive jaw with a sharp little click of the teeth.

“You are joking on the edge of your grave, my young friend.  I taught you in Gaston that you were not big enough to fight me:  do you think you are big enough now?”

“I don’t think; I know,” said Kent, incisively.  “And since you have referred to the Gaston days:  let me ask if I ever gave you any reason to believe that I could be scared out?”

“Keep to the point,” retorted Bucks, harshly.  “This State isn’t broad enough to hold you and me on opposite sides of the fence.  I could make it too hot to hold you without mixing up in it myself, but I choose to fight my own battles.  Will you take twenty thousand dollars spot cash, and MacFarlane’s job as circuit judge when I’m through with him?  Yes or no.”

“No.”

“Then what will you take?”

“Without committing myself in any sense, I might say that you are getting off too cheaply on your most liberal proposition.  You and your friends have looted a seventy-million-dollar railroad, and——­”

“You might have stood in on that if you had taken Guilford’s offer,” was the brusk rejoinder.  “There was more than a corporation lawyer’s salary in sight, if you’d had sense enough to see it.”

“Possibly.  But I stayed out—­and I am still out.”

“Do you want to get in?  Is that your price?”

“I intend to get in—­though not, perhaps, in the way you have in mind.  Are you ready to recall Judge MacFarlane with instructions to give us our hearing on the merits?”

The governor’s face was wooden when he said: 

“Is that all you want?  I understand MacFarlane is returning, and you will doubtless have your hearing in due season.”

“Not unless you authorize it,” Kent objected.

“And if I do?  If I say that I have already done so, will you come in and lay down your arms?”

“No.”

“Then I’m through.  Give me your key and write me an order on the Security Bank for those papers you are holding.”

“No,” said Kent, again.

“I say yes!” came the explosive reassertion; and Kent found himself looking down the bright barrel of a pistol thrust into his face across the table.