“Sshh! There must be a mistake somewhere. How _can_ it be so? Here, don’t you tell anybody about this. Keep your mouth shut until we find out more, anyhow. If it is a mistake--and in spite of everything I believe it must be--you nor I don’t want to get ourselves into trouble by spreadin’ the news around. Wait! Don’t you tell a soul; do you hear?” The depot master nodded. “I hear,” he observed. “You needn’t worry. I don’t shove my toe under Foster Townsend’s boot until I know what I’m doin’. I’ve seen too many toes jammed that way. I won’t say nothin’.... But, good heavens above, Cap’n Ben, suppose it _is_ true! Foster Townsend licked by Elisha Cook!... Aw, it _can’t_ be.” All the way home the captain kept telling himself that very thing--it could not be. The Boston broker was a trustworthy man, one not likely to accept an unsubstantiated rumor, but nevertheless-- No, there was a mistake somewhere, there must be. Captain Ben, as usual when in trouble or perplexed, took council with his wife. He handed her the telegram. “It can’t be so, can it, Mary?” he demanded. “You don’t believe it, do you?” Mrs. Snow dazedly shook her head. “I declare I don’t know what to believe, Ben,” she said. “It doesn’t seem as if it _could_ be, but--but I suppose it might. Of course Elisha Cook and his lawyers must have thought they had a good chance or they wouldn’t have kept on fighting the way they have.” Her husband nodded. “But for Foster--for Foster Townsend to be beat, to have anybody stop _him_ from having his own way, why--why, it doesn’t seem possible,” he vowed. “I know; I know it doesn’t.... But, Ben, things haven’t been going as smooth with him lately. Seems almost as if he started to slide down hill away back last summer and has kept sliding. First, there was that accident to Mr. Covell and all the talk it stirred up.” “I know, but he didn’t have anything to do with that.” “It was around him and those in his house that the talk settled. There was something about that accident that has never been cleared up. Bob Griffin was mixed up in it and the next thing we knew he had run away with Esther. We all know what a blow that was to Captain Foster. He won’t talk about it, of course, but it was a terrible setback for him. And now, if this should be true--well, I know what will be said. People will say pride always goes before a fall; that is what they will say.”