“Let me be quite clear upon that point,” said Blount; and if Hathaway had had eyes to see, he would have observed that the young lawyer’s attitude was becoming more judicial with every fresh questioning.  “Let me be quite sure that I understand.  You mean that you are allowed to charge the railroad company more than the market price on the material it buys?”

Hathaway nodded.  “Yes, that’s the way of it.”

“And this preferential rate is still in force?”

“It is.”

“You’re sure you have had no notice of its withdrawal—­say within the past few weeks?”

It was at this point that the lumber lord began to fear that some one had slipped a cog in sending him to first one and then another, and finally to young Blount.

“Of course, it hasn’t been withdrawn!” he retorted.  And then:  “You seem to think there is something off color in the deal, Mr. Blount, and I don’t know whether you’re stringing me or whether you’re too new in the railroad game to have the dope.  If you’re going into this political knock-down-and-drag-out, you ought to have the dope.  There isn’t a big interest in this State—­ore-shippers, power people, irrigation companies, or any of ’em—­that ain’t getting a rake-off.  I guess you are stringing me; I guess you know all this a good deal better than I do.  If you don’t, I can tell you that it’s a fact; not a ‘has-been’, but an ‘is’!  Ask Gantry; he’ll tell you, if he tells the truth.  We ain’t asking or getting anything that other people ain’t getting!”

“I see,” said Blount soberly.  “What do you expect me to do, Mr. Hathaway?”

“I want you to set the wheels in motion so that we can have our rate made good for another two years—­on the same terms as before.  You’re going to need every vote you can get this year, and you can’t afford to turn us down.”  Then the lumber-king shifted again to his own necessities.  “It’s the only way we can live and do business nowadays.  Like every other large corporation, we’ve got an army of little investors to look out for:  widows, orphans, charitable institutions, and trustees’ accounts.  I’ve got a list of our stockholders right here, and I’d like to have you look it over.”

Blount took the paper mechanically, and quite as mechanically ran his eye down the list of names.  At the bottom of it, written in with a pen, was the name of Patricia’s father, with his residence and occupation.  While he was staring at the pen-written name, Hathaway went on, eloquently emphasizing the disastrous results which would fall upon the people for whom he was, in the larger sense, a guardian and a trustee—­the disaster hinging upon the withdrawal of the preferential rate.

Blount broke him abruptly in the midst of the special plea.  “I see you have recently added one new name to this list:  the name of Professor Anners.  How—­”

“Yes,” interrupted the Twin Buttes diplomatist hastily, fearing that this legal-minded young man would presently be asking questions too hard to be answered; “now there’s a case in point:  Mr. Anners is a good example of our smaller stockholders.  Men like Anners, college professors, preachers, and so on, buy stocks, when they buy ’em at all, for an investment—­for the income—­and they pay for ’em out of their hard-earned savings.”