"If you want to get anything out of me you'd better curb your tongue, Bill Fletcher," replied Christopher coolly, feeling an animal instinct to prolong the torture. "If you think it's any satisfaction to me to have your young idiot thrown on my hands you were never more mistaken in your life. I've been up half the night with him, and the sooner you take him away the better I'll like it." "Oh, you leave him to me and I'll settle him," responded Fletcher, reaching for his hat. "Jest show me whar he is and I'll git even with him befo' sundown. As for you, young man, I'll have the sheriff after you yit." "In the meantime, you'd better have the doctor. The boy's ill, I tell you. He came to me last evening, run to death and with a high fever. He slept in the barn, and this morning he is decidedly worse. If you come, bring Doctor Cairn with you, and I warn you now you've got to use a lot of caution. Your grandson is mortally afraid of you, and he threatens to run away if I let you know where he is. He wants me to sit at the door with a shotgun and keep you off." He delivered his blows straight out from the shoulder, lingering over each separate word that he might enjoy to the full its stupendous effect. "This is your doing," repeated Fletcher hoarsely; "it's your doing, every blamed bit of it." Christopher laughed shortly. "Well, I'm through with my errand," he said, moving toward the steps and pausing with one hand on a great white column. "The sooner you get him out of my barn the better riddance it will be. There's one thing certain, though, and that is that you don't lay eyes on him without the doctor. He's downright ill, on my oath." "Oh, it's the same old trick, and I see through it," exclaimed Fletcher furiously. "It's pure shamming." "All the same, I've got my gun on hand, and you don't go into that barn alone." He hung for an instant upon the topmost step, then descended hurriedly and walked rapidly back along the broad white walk. It would be an hour, at least, before Fletcher could follow him with Doctor Cairn, and after he had returned to the barn and given Will a glass of new milk he fed and watered the horses and did the numberless small tasks about the house. He was at the woodpile, chopping some light wood splinters for Cynthia, when the sound of wheels reached him, and in a little while more the head of Fletcher's mare appeared around the porch. Doctor Cairn, a frousy, white-bearded old man, crippled from rheumatism, held out his hand to Christopher as he descended with some difficulty between the wheels of the buggy.