d Ramsey, laughing more.

"Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.

Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life
for your sick brother."

"Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at
Hugh.

"Well, sir?" he once more challenged.

"He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh.

"_Well, sir?_"

"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."

"You lie!"

"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.

"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian,
blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down.

"Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away."

"I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's
sister had to laugh with her.

"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop
declines to touch it."

The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted
his mother.

"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.

"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"

Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down
between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh
and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could
choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was
replying to him. Said Hugh:

"I'll take your letter and send it with my own."

"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"

"Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed
from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop
wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even
by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly
clinging to the jamb.

"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the
whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in
a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he
slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.

A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to
ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did
it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He
drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached
for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had
borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door