“Not a drop, Peter.”

“I’ll die if I don’t get it.”

“Then die sober.”

Peter made no reply.  McGregor felt his pulse, made his usual careful examination, and said at last, “Now keep quiet, and in a few days you’ll be well.”

“For God’s sake, give me whisky—­a little.  I’m so weak I can’t stand up.”

“No,” said McGregor, “it will pass.  Now I must go.  A word with you, Mr. Rivers.”  When outside of the room he said, “We must trust Billy, I suppose?”

“Yes, there is no one else.”

“That man is giving his whole mind to thinking how he can get whisky.  He will lie, cheat, steal, do anything to get it.”

“How can he?  Neither Billy nor his old mother will help him.  He will get well, Doctor, I suppose?”

“Yes, I told him he would.  More’s the pity.  He is a permanent nuisance, up to any wickedness, a hopelessly ruined wild beast.”

“Perhaps,” said Rivers; “perhaps.  Who can be sure of that?” He despaired of no one.

The sadly experienced doctor shook his head.  “He will live to do much mischief.  The good die young; you may be sure the wicked do not.  In some ways the man’s case has its droll side.  Queer case! in some ways interesting.”

“How is it interesting?” said Rivers.

“Oh, what he saw—­his delusions when he was at his worst.”

“What did he see?”

“Oh, bugs—­snakes—­the common symptoms, and at last the ‘Wilmot Proviso.’  Imagine it.  He knew no more of that than of the physiology of the man in the moon.  He described it as a ‘plucked chicken.’”

“I suppose that was a wild contribution from the endless political talk of the town.”

“Well, a ‘plucked chicken’ was not so bad.  He saw also ‘Bleeding Kansas.’  A ‘stuck pig’ that was; and more—­more, but I must go.”

Rivers went back to the room.  “Here is your tobacco, Billy, and wait downstairs; don’t go away.”

The big man turned over in bed as the clergyman entered.  “Mr. Rivers.  I’m bad.  I might have died.  Won’t you pray for me?”

Rivers hesitated, and then fell on his knees at the bedside, his face in his hands.  Peter lay still smiling, grimly attentive.  As Rivers rose to his feet, Lamb said, “Couldn’t I have just a little whisky?  Doctors don’t always know.  I’ve been in this scrape before, and just a little liquor does help and it don’t do any harm.  I can’t think, I’m so harried inside.  I can’t even pray, and I want to pray.  Now, you will, sir, won’t you?”

This mingling of low cunning, of childlike appeal and of hypocrisy, obviously suggested anything but the Christian charity of reply; what should he say?  Putting aside angry comment, he fell back upon his one constant resource, What would Christ have said to this sinful man?  He stood so long silent by the bed, which creaked as Lamb sat up, that the man’s agony of morbid thirst caught from his silence a little hope, and he said, “Now you will, I know.”