It was seven o'clock in the evening of the fiercest working day Kent had ever fought through when the special train—his own private special, sent to Gaston and brought back again over the strike-paralyzed road by the express permission and command of the strikers themselves—set him down in the Union Station at the capital.
Looking back to the gray of the morning when he had shaken hands with Governor Marston at the door of the room on the top floor of the Kittleton Building, the crowding events made the interval seem more like a week; and now the events themselves were beginning to take on dream-like incongruities in the haze of utter weariness.
"Evening Argus! all about the p'liminary trial of Governor Bucks. Argus, sir?" piped a small boy at the station exit; but Kent shook his head, found a cab and had himself conveyed quickly through streets still rife with excitement to the Clarendon Hotel.
In the lobby was the same bee-buzzing crowd with which he had been contending all day, and he edged his way through it to the elevator, praying that he might go unrecognized—as he did. Once safe in his rooms he sent for Loring, stretching himself on the bed in a very ecstasy of relaxation until the ex-manager came up. Then he emptied his mind as an overladen ass spills its panniers.
"I'm done, Grantham," he said; "and that is more different kinds of truth than you have heard in a week. Go and reorganize your management, and M'Tosh is the man to put in Halkett's place. The strike will be declared off at the mere mention of your name and his. That's all. Now go away and let me sleep."
"Oh, hold on!" was the good-natured protest; "I'm not more curious than I have to be, but I'd like to know how it was done."
"I don't know, myself; and that's the plain fact. But I suspect Marston fell upon Judge MacFarlane: gave him a wire hint of what was due to arrive if he didn't give us a clean bill of health. I had my preliminary interview with the governor at daybreak this morning; and I was with him again between nine and ten. He went over the original papers with me, and about all he said was, 'Be in Gaston by two o'clock this afternoon, and MacFarlane will give you the hearing in chambers.' I went on my knees to the Federative Council to get a train."
"You shouldn't have had any trouble there."
"I didn't have, after the men understood what was in the wind. Jarl Oleson took me down and brought me back. The council did it handsomely, dipping into its treasury and paying the mileage on a Pullman car."
"And MacFarlane reversed his own order?"