“And you never told me!” said Kent, reproachfully.  “Well, no matter; I found out for myself that he is a man to tie to.  After we had canvassed the purely legal side of the affair, he wanted to know more, and I went in for the details, telling him all the inferences which involve Bucks, Meigs, Hendricks, MacFarlane and the lot of them.”

Miss Portia’s eyes were flashing.

“Good, good, good!” she said.  “David, I’m proud of you.  That took courage—­heaps of it.”

“I did have to forget pretty hard that he was the lieutenant-governor and nominally one of the gang.  But if he is not with us, neither is he against us.  He took it all in quietly, and when I was through, he said:  ’You have told me some things that I knew, and some others that I only suspected.’”

“Was that all?” asked Miss Van Brock, eagerly.

“No; I took a good long breath and asked his advice.”

“Did he give it?”

“He did.  He said in sober earnest just what Hunnicott had said in a joke:  ’If I had your case to fight, I should try to obliterate Judge MacFarlane.’  I began to say that MacFarlane’s removal wouldn’t help us so long as Bucks has the appointing of his successor, and then he turned on me and hammered it in with a last word just as we were leaving the train:  ‘I didn’t say remove; I said obliterate.’  I caught on, after so long a time, and I’ve been hard at work ever since.”

“You are obliterating me,” said Miss Portia.  “I haven’t the slightest idea what it is all about.”

“It’s easy from this on,” said Kent, consolingly.  “You know how MacFarlane secured his reelection?”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Well, to cut a long story short, the gerrymander deal won’t stand the light.  The constitution says—­”

“Oh, please don’t quote law books at me.  Put it in English—­woman-English, if you can.”

“I will.  The special act of the Assembly is void; therefore there was no legal election, and, by consequence, there is no judge and no receiver.”

Miss Van Brock was silent for a reflective minute.  Then she said: 

“On second thought, perhaps you would better tell me what the constitution says, Mr. David.  Possibly I could grasp it.”

“It is in the section on elections.  It says:  ’All circuit or district judges, and all special judges, shall be elected by the qualified voters of the respective circuits or districts in which they are to hold their court.’  Kiowa County was cut out of Judge Whitcomb’s circuit and placed in Judge MacFarlane’s for electoral purposes only.  In all other respects it remains a part of Judge Whitcomb’s circuit, and will so continue until Whitcomb’s term expires.  Without the vote of Kiowa, MacFarlane could not have been elected; with it he was illegally elected, or, to put it the other way about, he was not elected at all.  Since he is not lawfully a judge, his acts are void, among them this appointment of Major Guilford as receiver for the Trans-Western.”