ort, but the keen
north-easter soon found its way even through that, and the hot pies on
which he expended the rest did not warm him for very long; there came a
day, too, when he could only hold his pie between his frozen hands,
dreamily wondering why he felt no wish to eat it, why the sight of it
made him feel so sick. A dreadful day that was. Mechanically, Wikkey
from time to time, swept his way slowly over the crossing, but the
greater part of the time he spent sitting at the foot of the lamp-post
at either end, coughing and shivering, and now and then dozing and
starting up in terror lest the "big chap" should have passed by during
his brief unconsciousness. Dusk came on, and then lamp-light, and still
Wikkey sat there. A policeman passing on his beat saw the haggard face
and heard the choking cough. "You'd best be off home, my lad," he said,
pausing a moment; "you don't look fit to be out on a night like this;"
and Wikkey, taking the remark to be only another form of the oft-heard
injunction to "move on," seized his broom and began sweeping as in an
evil dream--then sank down exhausted on the other side. It was getting
late, later than he usually stayed, but something seemed to warn him
that this might be his last chance, and he remained crouching there,
almost too far-gone to be conscious of the cold; till on a sudden there
came, piercing through the dull mist of returning consciousness, a
voice saying:

"Hullo, Wikkey! you are late to-night."

And starting upward with wild startled eyes the boy saw Lawrence Granby.
He staggered to his feet and gasped out:

"You've come, have you? I've been a watching and a waiting of you, and I
thought as you'd never come again."

Then the cough seized him, shaking him till he could only cling to the
lamp-post for support till it was over, and then slip down in a helpless
heap on the pavement.

"Wikkey, poor little chap, how bad you are," said Lawrence, looking
sadly down on the huddled-up figure; "you oughtn't to be out. You--you
haven't been watching for me like this?"

"I've been a watching and a watching," Wikkey answered, in faint hoarse
tones, "and I thought you'd taken to another crossing and I'd never see
you again."

"Poor little chap! poor little lad!" was all the young man could find to
say, while there rose up in his heart an impulse which his common sense
tried hard to suppress, but in vain. "Wikkey," he said, at last, "you
must come home with me;" and he to