When he went to the Post Office for the noon mail, he encountered Hetty on the street. Because he was thoughtful and abstracted, he spoke to her curtly. Hetty did not speak to him at all. She turned away her head. But Wint, already passing by, did not mark this. He met B. B. Beecham in the Post Office, and stopped in with B. B. at the _Journal_ office afterward. B. B. talked pleasantly of a number of things, till Wint could be still no longer. He asked abruptly: “B. B., have you heard anything?” The editor looked surprised. “How do you mean?” he asked. “What’s Kite up to?” B. B. said: “I don’t know. Is he up to something?” “He came to me before court this morning and demanded that I withdraw from this fight and let Lutcher go.” “Demanded it?” “Yes.” “On what ground?” “He made some covert threat. He was not specific.” B. B. shook his head. “I hadn’t heard.” “Oh, no one knows this,” Wint told him. “I refused, of course, and fined Lutcher. Now every one in town seems to know that something is going to drop on me.” “What is there that he can bring against you?” “Not a thing. Except the old stuff. What everybody knows.” B. B. nodded. “I should not worry, if I were you, if there’s nothing.” “There isn’t anything, I tell you,” Wint exclaimed impatiently. “Then what can he do?” Wint got up, a little weary. “All right,” he said. “I thought you might have heard.” B. B. shook his head. “Not a thing.” Wint went to Sam O’Brien’s restaurant for dinner. It was a little after his usual hour, and there were only two or three others on the stools before the high, scrubbed counter. O’Brien waited on Wint himself, and Wint ate in silence, under the other’s sympathetic eye. When he paid for his dinner, O’Brien asked heartily: “Well, Wint, m’ boy, how’s tricks?” Wint looked up at the other and smiled wearily. “Rotten, Sam,” he said. O’Brien protested. “Lord, now, I’d not say that. As fine a day as it is.” “I wasn’t talking about the weather,” Wint told him. “It’s just.... I guess I’m in the dumps, Sam. I’ve got a hunch. I’ve got a hunch something’s going to drop on me like a ton of bricks.” “A hunch like that is bum company,” O’Brien commented. “Where did you get it, Wint?” Wint shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Lord, boy! You act like you’d lost your nerve, Wint.” Wint said: “Maybe I have.” He was terribly depressed, almost ready to drop out and surrender. “You’d nerve enough when you soaked Lutcher, this morning,” Sam reminded him. “I was proud of you, m’ son. You’ve give me many a laugh, Wint, but I was proud o’ your cool nerve this day.” “Oh, I’m not worried about Lutcher.” “I’d not be. Him nor his. The old buzzard of a Kite, neither.” Wint said: “I don’t know. Kite’s got something up his sleeve.” “That’s as much as to say that he’s tricky. It’s these magicians that has things up their sleeves. Full of tricks. You stick to the middle of the road, Wint, and never mind their tricks. They’ll trick their own selves.”