Delicacy of touch at critical moments was not one of Squire Phineas Look’s attributes. Now he leaned his elbows on the table, locked his fingers together, and bending toward the old man said bluntly: “What you mean is, that it would be bad for you if you were defeated for town treasurer, after your thirty years of service, since that would mean that your books would be examined.” He pitied Willard when he crumpled down in his chair. In the silence the lawyer had the queer thought come to him that the old man’s flabby neck-skin looked like turkey’s wattles, flushed with dull red as they were now. “That is a cruel taunt--an unjust advantage to take of a man who has served his town so many years, Lawyer Look. I’ll own to you that I do have some pride in the fact that I have been treasurer of this town so long. I have set my heart on being reelected. It’s an old man’s whim, Mr. Look--just an old man’s whim, and it would hurt my feelings cruelly if the voters allowed your brother to work out his grudge in that way. If I could only have another year--if I----” The lawyer, who had been steadily staring into his shifting eyes, broke in upon his faltering appeal. “I always hate to see any living creature squirm, whether it’s an angle-worm on a hook or a man on the rack of his own conscience,” he said in his blunt, brusque manner. “I never delighted in torturing anything, Judge. This is something like killing a creature to put it out of its misery, but I’m not going to beat about the bush.” Willard had hooked his thin hands around the rungs of his chair and was staring at the attorney with horror in his eyes.