"Oh, the sooner the better; get through with it! Get through with it!" He stared at his visitor and blinked rapidly; a moment later he shook all over. "Lavendar, it will kill me!" He was very frail, this shrunken old man in the green dressing-gown and high beaver hat, with his lower lip sucked in like a frightened child's. The torch of life, blown so often into furious flame by hurricanes of rage, had consumed itself, and it seemed now as if its flicker might be snuffed out by any slightest gust. "He may come up to-night," he mumbled, shivering in the hot sunshine and the drift of locust blossoms, as if he were cold. "It can't be to-night; he's gone out West. He gets back Saturday. I'll send him up Sunday evening--if I can." "Gad-a-mercy, Lavendar," Benjamin Wright said whimpering, "you've got to come, too!" He looked at his old friend with scared eyes. "I won't go to the gate with you. Can't leave these birds. I'm a slave to 'em." But Dr. Lavendar saw that shaking legs were the real excuse; and he went away a little soberly in spite of his triumph. Would there be any danger to Benjamin from the agitation of the interview? He must ask Willy King. Then he remembered that the doctor had started for Philadelphia that morning; so there was nothing to do but wait. "I'm afraid there's some risk," he thought. "But Benjamin had better die in peace than live in anger. Oh, this play-writing business! If I could only depend on him to hold his tongue about it; but I can't." Then as he and Goliath trudged along in the sun, he gave himself up to his own rejoicings. "To think I was afraid to let him know that Mrs. Richie could be depended upon to help us!" He looked up as if in smiling confession to some unseen Friend. "Yes, indeed; 'He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.' It was the promise of Mrs. Richie's help that scared him into it! I won't be so crafty next time," he promised in loving penitence. CHAPTER XIV In the stage the day he started for Philadelphia, William King read over his Martha's memorandum with the bewildered carefulness peculiar to good husbands: ten yards of crash; a pitcher for sorghum; samples of yarn; an ounce of sachet-powder, and so forth.