“Oh! there go Squire’s horses for exercise; Joe’s on Lucy.”

“Damn Lucy!  Do you go to mother’s room—­”

“What for?”

“Oh, she keeps her money in it, and Mrs. Penhallow paid her in advance the day she left.”

“Can’t do it,” said Billy, who had strict orders not to leave Lamb alone.

“Oh, just look in the top drawer.  She keeps a bit of money rolled up in one of her stockings.  That will get me a little whisky and you lots of tobacco.”

“Can’t do it,” said Billy.  “Want me to steal?  Won’t do it.”

“Then I’ll get even with you some day.”

Billy laughed.  “Why I could lick you—­like Mr. John licked the doctor’s son.  Gosh! there goes Pole’s wagon.”

Lamb fell to thought of how to get that whisky.  The ingenuity of the man who craves alcohol or morphia is sometimes surprising even to the most experienced doctor.  The immorality of the means of attainment is never considered.  If, as with Lamb, a lie or worse be needed, there is a certain satisfaction in having outwitted nurse and doctor.

On the day after the two clergymen had heard John’s final opinion of Lamb, the bed-fast man received his daily visit from his spiritual physician, and the clergyman met at the house door the doctor of the body.  “I suppose,” said McGregor, “that you and I as concerns this infernal rascal are under orders from Penhallow and his wife.  I at least have the satisfaction of being paid—­”

“Oh, I am paid, Doctor,” the clergyman smiled.

“Of course, any one and every one who serves that very efficient and positive saint, Mrs. Penhallow, is paid.  She’s too terrifyingly good.  It must be—­well, inconvenient at times.  Now she wants this animal looked after because of Mrs. Lamb; and the squire has some sort of absurd belief that because the same breasts that nursed him nursed our patient, he must befriend the fellow—­and he does.  Truth is, Rivers, that man’s father was a sodden drunkard but, I am told, not otherwise bad.  It’s a pretty sure doom for the child.  This man’s body has damned his soul, and now the soul is paying it back in kind.”

“The damnation will be settled elsewhere,” said Rivers gravely.  “You are pleading for him when you say he had a father who drank.”

“Well, yes, yes.  That is true, but I do confoundedly mistrust him.  He never remembers a kindness and never forgets the smallest injury.  But when Mrs. Penhallow puts a hand on your arm and you look at her, you just go and do what she wants done.  Oh, me too!  Let’s get out of this unreasonable sun and see this fellow.”

Billy was chasing blue-bottle flies on the window panes, and the patient in bed was lying still, flushed, with red eyes.  He was slowly recovering from an attack of delirium tremens and reassembling his scattered wits.

“Well,” said McGregor, “better, I see.  Bugs gone?”

“Yes, sir; but if I had a little, just a nip of whisky to taper off on, I’d be all right.”