irty sparrow chirped on the sill
where the Nurse had been in the habit of leaving crumbs. Billy
Grant, very sleepy and contented now that he had got his way,
dictated a line or two on a blank symptom record, and signed his
will in a sprawling hand.

"If only," he muttered, "I could see Lin's face when that's--sprung
on him!"

The minister picked up the Bible from the tumbled bed and opened it.

"Perhaps," he suggested very softly, "if I read from the Word of
God----"

Satisfied now that he had fooled the Lindley Grants out of their
very shoebuttons, Billy Grant was asleep--asleep with the
thermometer under his arm and with his chest rising and falling
peacefully.

The minister looked across at the Nurse, who was still holding the
thermometer in place. She had buried her face in the white
counterpane.

"You are a good woman, sister," he said softly. "The boy is happier,
and you are none the worse. Shall I keep the paper for you?"

But the Nurse, worn out with the long night, slept where she knelt.
The minister, who had come across the street in a ragged
smoking-coat and no collar, creaked round the bed and threw the edge
of the blanket over her shoulders.

Then, turning his coat collar up over his unshaved neck, he departed
for the mission across the street, where one of his derelicts, in
his shirtsleeves, was sweeping the pavement. There, mindful of the
fact that he had come from the contagious pavilion, the minister
brushed his shabby smoking-coat with a whiskbroom to remove the
germs!

III

Billy Grant, of course, did not die. This was perhaps because only
the good die young. And Billy Grant's creed had been the honour of a
gentleman rather than the Mosaic Law. There was, therefore, no
particular violence done to his code when his last thoughts--or what
appeared to be his last thoughts--were revenge instead of salvation.

The fact was, Billy Grant had a real reason for hating the Lindley
Grants. When a fellow like that has all the Van Kleek money and a
hereditary thirst, he is bound to drink. The Lindley Grants did not
understand this and made themselves obnoxious by calling him "Poor
Billy!" and not having wine when he came to dinner. That, however,
was not his reason for hating them.

Billy Grant fell in love. To give the devil his due, he promptly set
about reforming himself. He took about half as many whisky-and-sodas
as he had been in the habit of doing, and cut out champagne
altogether. He t