And that's the guy I was most afraid of!" Lawler walked down the big corridor, across the rotunda, and into another corridor to the door of the governor's office.

As he passed through the rotunda he was aware that several persons congregated there watched him curiously; and he heard one of them say, guardedly: "That's Kane Lawler, of Wolf River.

He'd have been governor, right now, if he'd said the word last fall.

Biggest man in the state!" There was truth in the man's words, though Lawler reddened when he heard them.

Three times in the days preceding the convention which had nominated Perry Haughton, the present governor, delegations from various sections of the state had visited Lawler at the Circle L, endeavoring to prevail upon him to accept the nomination; and one day the editor of the most important newspaper in the capital had journeyed to the Circle L, to add his voice to the argument advanced by the delegations.
But Lawler had refused, because previously to their visits he had given his word to York Falkner.