“Oh, no; he is going back with Loring to-night.  Loring has an idea of his own which may or may not be worth the powder it will take to explode it.  He is going to beseech the Boston people to enlarge the pool until it controls a safe majority of the stock.”

“What good will that do?”

“None, directly.  It’s merely a safe preliminary to anything that may happen.  I tell Loring he is like all the others:  he knows when he has enough and is willing to stand from under.  I’m the only fool in the lot.”  Ormsby’s smile was heartening and good for sore nerves.

“I like your pluck, Kent; I’ll be hanged if I don’t.  And I’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.