When Dock came back, Miss Lucy pointed to the pear tree. "Jest go and help yourselves, Dock, you and your cousin: I--I've got to git a little note ready, I want to send by you." It was many minutes before Miss Lucy, with her eyes suspiciously pink, appeared under the pear tree with a sealed envelope of a delicate lavender shade, in her hands, and the three, Dock, his "cousin" and the basket were alike full. "Ef you could give this to him, without anybody seein' hit, I'd be glad," faltered Miss Lucy, as Dunaway placed the envelope carefully in the pocket of Jappy's white blouse. "Mr. Lindsay shall have this in his hands in a few minutes, and nobody shall be the wiser," he assured her with a smile so full of good-will and encouragement, that her heart lightened as she looked at him. When the two pear-bearers once more appeared at the Doggett home, Dunaway wore his own clothes, and a bundle in a clump of briars awaited a favorable opportunity to be conveyed to the house. All that afternoon, Mr. Lindsay sat leaning against the pine in the front yard, with a glow in his face that told of a joyful heart within, and when Lily Pearl's pet pig, his especial aversion, poked an inquiring nose against the letter in his left hand, he gently patted the muddy back with his right. CHAPTER XIV MR. DOGGETT LENDS A HAND "He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need!" Humming a joyous little song, Miss Lucy James came out of the garden about ten o'clock on Monday morning, a day lily in one hand, a basket of sage leaves in the other and the brightness of the morning in her face. "You, Lucy Ann, you come here!" Miss Nancy, standing on the back porch, transfixed her sister with a glance so full of disgust and censoriousness that Miss Lucy quivered. The old man stood by Miss Nancy, with an unfolded sheet of lavender note paper in his hand. "Here's a letter, Lucy Ann," he sneered, waving the sheet before Miss Lucy: "a letter a fool woman writ to Lindsay a yistiddy, tellin' him a passel o' foolishness about her a thinkin' he'd give her up: and how happy she is to know he's a lovin' her yit: and how proud she'd be to see him again: and how 'feerd she's been he'd work too hard and maybe git sick, and a rigamarole o' other sech stuff! And your name's to hit. I wanter know, did you write hit?" [Illustration: "Here's a letter, Lucy Ann," he sneered.] The scorn in his voice burnt Miss Lucy's heart like a live coal: a darkness came before her, and she clutched at a pillar of the porch to steady herself, with fingers as cold and devoid of feeling as those of the dead. Her silence aggravated the old man further. "So you're still a runnin' after that weakly critter, air ye?" he sputtered, the paper shaking in his hands, "a man with one foot in the grave, and hain't laid up a cent as fur as anybody knows! What can you promise yourse'f a marryin' _him_?" Miss Lucy's stiff lips moved. "I--Pa--we could work!"