uch, I know: your porridge and a cup of tea is about
all. And then there's my father to look after your health, and Agnes to
amuse you sometimes, and my mother to look after everything, and"--

Here poor Hector fairly broke down. When he recovered himself he said--

"But how could gentle folks like you bear to see a hump-backed creature
like me crawling about the place?"

"They would only enjoy it the more that you enjoyed it," said Willie.

It was all arranged. As soon as Hector was able to be moved, he was
carried up to the Ruins, and there nursed by everybody. Nothing could
exceed his comfort now but his gratitude. He was soon able to work
again, and as he was evidently happier when doing a little towards the
general business, Mr Macmichael thought it best for him.

One day, Willie being at work in his laboratory, and getting himself
half-stifled with a sudden fume of chlorine, opened the door for some
air just as Hector had passed it. He stood at the door and followed him
down the walk with his eyes, watching him as he went--now disappearing
behind the blossoms of an apple-tree, now climbing one of the little
mounds, and now getting up into the elm-tree, and looking about him on
all sides, his sickly face absolutely shining with pleasure.

"But," said Willie all at once to himself, "why should Hector be the
only invalid to have this pleasure?"

He found no answer to the question. I don't think he looked for one very
hard though. And again, all at once, he said to himself--

"What if this is what my grannie's money was given me for?"

That night he had a dream. The two questions had no doubt a share in
giving it him, and perhaps also a certain essay of Lord Bacon--"Of
Building," namely--which he had been reading before he went to bed.

[Illustration: WILLIE'S DREAM.]

He dreamed that, being pulled up in the middle of the night by his
wheel, he went down to go into the garden. But the moment he was out of
the back door, he fancied there was something strange going on in his
room in the ruins--he could not tell what, but he must go and see. When
he climbed the stairs and opened the door, there was Hector Macallaster
where he ought to be, asleep in his bed. But there _was_ something
strange going on; for a stream, which came dashing over the side of the
wooden spout, was flowing all round Hector's bed, and then away he knew
not whither. Another strange thing was, that in the further wall was a
door which was