But while the newsboys were crying the extra, a most astounding flash had come in over the Washington wire. Titmarsh read it and could hardly believe his eyes. Agitated, he let the flimsy flutter from his hand. He picked it up and read it again, slowly, chin trembling. A dispatch that the sun would cease to shine after today would hardly have startled him more. His impulse was to ring up Scanlon. "Look here, what in blazes is this darn thing?" he would have blundered hoarsely; but an instinct said, "No: wait a minute."
If the dispatch were correct, Scanlon was no man to consult. If it were true, John Boland was a colossus of hypocrisy, towering over the three towns, an arch-villain of his time. For twenty years the editor had looked to Boland for sustenance and profit. If Boland were a mere adventurer, building the fortunes of all of them upon a fraud—if Boland were ruined by this decision of the United States Supreme Court, why, he, Titmarsh, was ruined also. The ground his shop stood on was not his ground—the building that housed it was not his building—if everything that Boland had accumulated had been carried to pot by this one sweep of the gowned arm of justice, why, everything that he, Titmarsh, had accumulated, had been carried to pot also. So it seemed to his dizzy, recling mind. To him there came no speculation of pity for the broken buccaneer—he thought only of the victims, and among these victims, he felt first, and naturally, for himself.
A cold rage of resentment at Boland, a mighty impulse to revenge that was bigger than any emotion that had ever stirred in Titmarsh's pigeon breast, began to get hold of him. Instead of appealing to
