"Just now," said the rector, "he has acquired a temporary conscience in the shape of a congested stomach. I talked to him a little. He is penitent, or says he is, and as his mother is sometimes absent, I have set Billy to care for him; some one must. I have found that to keep Billy on a job you must give him a daily allowance of chewing tobacco; that answers."
"Bad company, Brother Rivers."
"Oh, there is no guile in Billy."
They parted at the Grey Pine gate. Rivers had innocently prepared remote mischief, which by no possible human foresight could he have anticipated. When, walking in the quiet of a lonely wood, a man sets his foot on a dead branch, the far end stirs another, and the motion so transmitted agitates a half dozen feet away the leaves of a group of ferns. The man stops and suspects some little woodland citizen as the cause of the unexplained movement; thus it is in the affairs of life. We do some innocent thing and are puzzled to explain how it brings about remote mischief.
Meanwhile an unendurable craving for drink beset the man Lamb, who was the prey of slowly lessening delusions. Guardian Billy chewed his daily supply of tobacco and sat at the window in the hot second-storey room feeding Lamb with brief phrases concerning what he saw on the street.
"Oh! there go Squire's horses for exercise; Joe's on Lucy."
"Damn Lucy! Do you go to mother's room—"
"What for?"
"Oh, she keeps her money in it, and Mrs. Penhallow paid her in advance the day she left."
"Can't do it," said Billy, who had strict orders not to leave Lamb alone.