"I hadn't ought to tell you, Davy, and you sick in bed," confessed the dismal Mr. Becket. "It's rubbin' it in too hard. Mr. Stanley P. Cochran has just bought out the Columbia sugar refineries, hook, line, and sinker. I read it in the _Shipping Gazette_ last week. And that included the whole fleet of square-rigged ships that fetches their cargoes from the Far East. He controls 'em all now, does Stanley P. Cochran."