After a while the assistant opened the door, holding a glass pitcher in his hand. “Here,” he said, when he saw me, “will you fill this with cold water from the well?” I took it and hurried out to the kitchen, where four or five people were sitting and glumly whispering around an old coloured woman, Joe's cook, who was crying and rocking herself in a chair. I hushed her up and told her to show me the pump. It was in an orchard behind the house, and was one of those old-fashioned things that sound like a siren whistle with the hiccups. It took me about five minutes to get the water up, and when I got back to Joe's room, a woman was there with the doctors. It was Miss Rainey. She had her hat off, her sleeves were rolled up and, though her face was the whitest I ever saw, she was cool and steady. It was she who took the water from me at the door. I heard low voices in the parlour, where a lamp was lit, and I went in there. Mary was sitting on a sofa, with a handkerchief hard against her eyes, and Hector was standing in the middle of the room, saying over and over, “My God!” and shaking. I went to the sofa and sat by Mary with my hand on her shoulder. “To think of it!” Hector moaned. “To think of its coming at such a time! To think of what it means to me!” His mother spoke to him from behind her handkerchief: “You mustn't do it; you _can't_ Hector--oh, you can't, you _can't._” For answer he struck himself desperately across the forehead with the palm of his hand. “What is it,” I asked, “that your mother wants you not to do?” “She wants me to give up Trimmer--to refuse to make the nominating speech for him to-morrow.” “You've _got_ to give him up!” cried his mother; and then went on with reiterations as passionate as they were weak and broken in utterance. “You can't make the speech, you can't do it, you _can't--“_ “Then I'm done for!” he said. “Don't you see what a frightful blow this pitiful, drunken folly of poor Joe's has dealt Trimmer's candidaoy? Don't you see that they rely on me more than ever, _now_? Are you so blind you don't see that I am the only man who can save Trimmer the nomination? If I go back on him now, he's done for and I'm done for with him! It's my only chance!” “No, no,” she sobbed, “you'll have other chances; you'll have plenty of chances, dear; you're young--” “My only chance,” he went on rapidly, ignoring her, “and if I can carry it through, it will mean everything to me. The tide's running strong against Trimmer to-night, and I am the only man in the world who can turn it the other way. If I go into the convention for him, faithful to him, and, out of the highest sense of justice, explain that, even though Lane has been my closest friend, he was in the wrong and that--” Mary rose to her feet and went to her son and clung to him. “No, no!” she cried; “no, _no_!” “I've got to!” he said.