Having been at the time a practitioner in one of the counties affected, he knew the political deal by which MacFarlane had been elected.  Briefly described, it was a swapping of horses in midstream.  In the preliminary canvass it was discovered that in all probability Judge MacFarlane’s district, as constituted, would not reelect him.  But the adjoining district was strong enough to spare a county without loss to the party; and that county added to MacFarlane’s voting strength would tip the scale in his favor.  The Assembly was in session, and the remedy was applied in the shape of a bill readjusting the district lines to fit the political necessity.

While this bill was still in the lower house an obstacle presented itself in the form of a vigorous protest from Judge Whitcomb, whose district was the one to suffer loss.  The county in question was a prosperous one, and the court fees—­which a compliant clerk might secretly divide with the judge appointing him—­were large:  wherefore Whitcomb threatened political reprisals if Kiowa County should be taken away from him.  The outcome was a compromise.  For elective purposes the two districts were gerrymandered as the bill proposed; but it was expressly provided that the transferred county should remain judicially in Whitcomb’s district until the expiration of Whitcomb’s term of office.

Having refreshed his memory as to the facts, Kent spent a forenoon in the State library.  He stayed on past the luncheon hour, feeding on a dry diet of Digests; and it was not until hunger began to sharpen his faculties that he thought of going back of the statutory law to the fountain-head in the constitution of the State.  Here, after he had read carefully section by section almost through the entire instrument, his eye lighted upon a clause which gradually grew luminous as he read and re-read it.

“That is what Marston meant; it must be what he meant,” he mused; and returning the book to its niche in the alcove he sat down to put his face in his hands and sum up the status in logical sequence.

The conclusion must have been convincing, since he presently sprang up and left the room quickly to have himself shot down the elevator shaft to the street level.  The telegraph office in the capitol was closed, but there was another in the Hotel Brunswick, two squares distant, and thither he went.

“Hold the pool in fighting trim at all hazards.  Think I have found weak link in the chain,” was his wire to Loring, at Boston; and having sent it, he went around to Cassatti’s and astonished the waiter by ordering a hearty luncheon at half-past three o’clock in the afternoon.

It was late in the evening before he left the tiny office on the fifth floor of the Quintard Building where one of his former stenographers had set up in business for herself.  Since five o’clock the young woman had been steadily driving the type-writer to Kent’s dictation.  When the final sheet came out with a whirring rasp of the ratchet, he suddenly remembered that he had promised Miss Van Brock to dine with her.  It was too late for the dinner, but not too late to go and apologize, and he did the thing that he could, stopping at his rooms on the way to dress while his cab-driver waited.