Page:Roy Norton--The unknown Mr Kent.djvu/215

 "Do? I can't do anything without your consent, and you won't give it. I wanted either to have him tried for conspiracy against the state, or throw him out of it, two months ago. You wouldn't consent. You said something about giving the calf rope enough to hang itself, and did all you could to assist him by gradually giving him more power."

"Well, has he hanged himself yet?"

"Hanged himself? Of course not. He's trying to have us hanged."

"How?" asked Kent with that same air of quiet enjoyment, that did not at all please the king.

"By surreptitiously making the people discontented. He has them believing that working the mines the way they do is an injustice; that from the mines I am getting rich; but that all the other state institutions are scarcely paying at all. It's useless to tell them that they are all profitable"

"Save one," slyly interjected Kent. "That state bath house is a complete failure. It has required all the means at my command to keep people from knowing it. The mineral springs turned to salt more than six weeks ago."

The king showed his surprise.

"Well, then—why—why didn't you close the place up? I didn't know that."

"True," said Kent, with the same easy [211]