"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."