“I tell you I can not, and I will not!”

“A late attack of conscience, eh?” sneered the governor, who was sobering rapidly now.  “Let me ask a question or two.  How much was that security debt your son-in-law let you in for?”

“It was ten thousand dollars.  It is an honest debt, and I shall pay it.”

“But not out of the salary of a circuit judge,” Bucks interposed.  “Nor yet out of the fees you make your clerks divide with you.  And that isn’t all.  Have you forgotten the gerrymander business?  How would you like to see the true inwardness of that in the newspapers?”

The judge shrank as if the huge gesturing hand had struck him.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he began.  “You were in that, too, deeper than——­”

Again the governor interrupted him.

“Cut it out,” he commanded.  “I can reward, and I can punish.  You are not going to do anything technically illegal; but, by the gods, you are going to walk the line laid down for you.  If you don’t, I shall give the documents in the gerrymander affair to the papers the day after you fail.  Now we’ll go and see Falkland.”

MacFarlane made one last protest.

“For God’s sake, Bucks! spare me that.  It is nothing less than the foulest collusion between the judge, the counsel for the plaintiff—­and the devil!”

“Cut that out, too, and come along,” said the governor, brutally; and by the steadying help of the chair, the door-post and the wall of the corridor, he led the way to the parlor suite on the floor below.

The conference in Falkland’s rooms was chiefly a monologue with the sharp-spoken New York lawyer in the speaking part.  When it was concluded the judge took his leave abruptly, pleading the lateness of the hour and his duties for the morrow.  When he was gone the New Yorker began again.

“You won’t want to be known in this, I take it,” he said, nodding at the governor.  “Mr. Hawk here will answer well enough for the legal part, but how about the business end of it.  Have you got a man you can trust?”

The governor’s yellow eyebrows met in a meaning scowl.

“I’ve got a man I can hang, which is more to the purpose.  It’s Major Jim Guilford.  He lives here; want to meet him?”

“God forbid!” said Falkland, fervently.  He rose and whipped himself into his overcoat, turning to Hawk:  “Have your young man get me a carriage, and see to it that my special is ready to pull east when I give the word, will you?”

Hawk went obediently, and the New Yorker had his final word with the governor alone.

“I think we understand each other perfectly,” he said.  “You are to have the patronage:  we are to pay for all actual betterments for which vouchers can be shown at the close of the deal.  All we ask is that the stock be depressed to the point agreed upon within the half-year.”

“It’s going to be done,” said the governor, trying as he could to keep the eye-image of his fellow conspirator from multiplying itself by two.