“There's one danger,” Mr. Keating continued. “Kedge Halloway is honest, but I believe he's selfish enough to disturb his best friend's deathbed for his own ends, and it's not unlikely that he will get nervous towards the last and be telegraphing Harkless to have himself carried on a cot to the convention to save him. That wouldn't do at all, of course, and Miss Sherwood thinks maybe there'd be less danger if we set the convention a little ahead of the day appointed. It's dangerous, because it shortens our time; but we can fix it for three days before the day we'd settled on, and that will bring it to September 7th. What we want of you, judge, is to go to the convention as a delegate, and make the nominating speech for Mr. Harkless. Will you do it?”
“Do it?” cried the old man, and he struck the table a resounding blow with his big fist. “Do it? I'd walk from here to Rouen and back again to do it!”
They were all on their feet at this, and they pressed forward to shake Briscoe's hand, congratulating him and each other as though they were already victorious. Mr. Martin bent over Helen and asked her if she minded shaking hands with a man who had voted for Shem at the first election in the Ark.
“I thought I'd rightly ort to thank you for finishin' off Kedge Halloway,” he added. “I made up my mind I'd never vote for him again, the night he killed that intellectual insect of his.”
“Intellectual insect, Mr. Martin?” she asked, puzzled.
He sighed. “The recollection never quits ha'ntin' me. I reckon I haven't had a restful night since June. Maybe you don't remember his lecture.”
“Oh, but I do,” she laughed; “and I remember the story of the fly, vividly.”
“I never was jest what you might exactly call gushin' over Kedge,” Mr. Martin drawled. “He doesn't strike me as havin' many ideas, precisely—he had kind of a symptom of one once, that he caught from Harkless, but it didn't take; it sloshed around in his mind and never really come out on him. I always thought his brain was sort of syrupy. Harkless thought there was fruit in it, and I reckon there is; but some way it never seems to jell.”
“Go on,” said Helen gayly. “I want to hear him abused. It helps me to feel less mean about the way we are treating him.”
“Yes; I'm slickin' over my conscience, too. I feel awnrier about it because he done me a good turn once, in the Hayes and Wheeler campaign. I went to a meetin' to hear him speak, and he got sick and couldn't.”