And, at the end of the week, while the excitement was still boiling, the big mogul returned to his native town. Varunas and the span were at the station to meet him. Mr. Gifford’s was a broken spirit now. At first defiant and scornful, scoffing at the rumors of his employer’s defeat, as those rumors changed to certainties his attitude changed with them. Still outwardly lofty and calm, he met every taunt with sniffs of contemptuous pity. “It don’t mean nothin’,” he asserted. “You fellers are hollerin’ your heads off, but wait till the old man gets through with this business. Them Supreme Courters are goin’ to lose their jobs, some of ’em. Ye-ah, all right, you wait and see. There’s a law against bribery and corruption, ain’t there? The President of the United States ain’t had his say about this case yet. You hold on. You’ll be meek enough by and by. Huh!” This to the world at large. But, at home, with his wife, it was different. Nabby was as downcast as he. “I declare if I believed in spirits and warnin’s and them kind of things,” she sighed, “I’d have been more prepared for it. It started by his lettin’ that Bob Griffin into this house. I ought to have seen that there was a ‘sign’ in that. First a Cook begins to come here; then he gets poor Mr. Covell kicked out of the way by a horse; then he runs off with Esther. And now this! What does the Good Book say? ‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’ that’s what it says.” Varunas pooh-poohed. “What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded. “Cap’n Foster never transgressed nothin’. ’Twas Griffin that was the transgressor and _his_ way is pretty soft, if you ask me. The good book says lots of things. It says somethin’ about heavin’ bread on the waters, if I recollect right. If you’d done that with this saleratus biscuit I’m tryin’ to eat just now ’twould have sunk, I’ll bet.” Mr. Gifford, awaiting his employer at the station, was outwardly serene but inwardly fearful. Would the great man whom he worshiped, of whose majesty he had so often boasted, step from that train a broken, humiliated wreck? Would he slink away from the curious crowd there gathered to watch his homecoming? He did not. The Gifford apprehensions along that line were groundless. Foster Townsend, when he crossed the platform to the dog-cart, was, to all appearances, quite unchanged. He acknowledged the bows and good-days with his usual careless condescension. He greeted Varunas with the accustomed gruff “Hello!” He even insisted upon taking the reins himself and driving the span along the main road to the gate of the mansion. The “mud frogs” were disappointed.