It had occurred to Kent, but he gave his own explanation of Major Guilford’s policy in a terse sentence.

“It is a part of the bluff; fattening the thing a little before they barbecue it.”

“I suppose so.  It’s a pity we don’t live a little farther back in the history of the world:  say at a time when we could hire MacFarlane’s doctor to obliterate the judge, and no questions asked.”

Who can explain how it is that some jesting word, trivial and purposeless it may be, will fire a hidden train of thought which was waiting only for some chance spark?  “Obliterate the judge,” said Hunnicott in grim jest; and straightway Kent saw possibilities; saw a thing to be done, though not yet the manner of its doing.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said abruptly to his companion, “I believe I’ll try to catch the Flyer back to the capital.  I came down to see about selling those lots of mine, but if you will undertake it for me——­”

“Of course,” said Hunnicott; “I’ll be only too glad.  You’ve ten minutes:  can you make it?”

Kent guessed so, and made the guess a certainty with two minutes to spare.  The through sleeper was lightly loaded, and he picked out the most unneighbored section, of the twelve, being wishful only for undisturbed thinking ground.  But before the train had swung past the suburb lights of Gaston, the smoker’s unrest seized him and the thought-wheels demanded tobacco.  Kent fought it as long as he could, making sure that the smoking-compartment liars’ club would be in session; but when the demand became a nagging insistence, he found his pipe and tobacco and went to the men’s room.

The little den behind the drawing-room had but one occupant besides the rear-end brakeman—–­a tall, saturnine man in a gray grass-cloth duster who was smoking a Porto Rican stogie.  Kent took a second look and held out his hand.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, Judge Marston.  I was counting on three hours of solitary confinement.”

The lieutenant-governor acknowledged the hand-clasp, nodded, and made room on the leather-covered divan for the new-comer.  Hildreth, the editor of the Argus, put it aptly when he said that the grim-faced old cattle king had “blown” into politics.  He was a compromise on the People’s Party ticket; was no part of the Bucks programme, and had been made to feel it.  Tradition had it that he had been a terror to the armed and organized cattle thieves of the early days; hence the brevet title of “Judge.”  But those that knew him best did not know that he had once been the brightest man upon the Supreme Bench of his native state:  this before failing health had driven him into exile.

As a mixer, the capital had long since voted Oliver Marston a conspicuous failure.  A reticent, reserved man by temperament and habit, and with both temperament and habit confirmed by his long exile on the cattle ranges, he had grown rather less than more talkative after his latest plunge into public life; and even Miss Van Brock confessed that she found him impossible on the social side.  None the less, Kent had felt drawn toward him from the first; partly because Marston was a good man in bad company, and partly because there was something remindful of the elder Kent in the strong face, the slow smile and the introspective eye of the old man from the hill country.