switch, and
walked on with the boy.

"Pretty lonely out here, isn't it?" he ventured.

"Oh, no. There is a street light we can see in a little while; it is
behind the hill now. We see it from the corner of our shack. It's
very cheery."

"Fine business," Dave repeated to himself. "And this is how our big
success was made. Well, the 'success' has vanished as quickly as it
came. I suppose there is a Law somewhere that is not mocked."

They were passing through a settlement of crude houses, dimly visible
in the starlight and by occasional yellow blurs from their windows.
Before one of the meanest of these the boy at last stopped. The upper
hinge of the door was broken, and a feeble light struggled through the
space where it gaped outward. Charlie pulled the door open, and Dave
entered. At first his eyes could not take in the dim outlines before
him; he was conscious of a very small and stuffy room, with a peculiar
odour which he attributed to an oil lamp burning on a box. He walked
over and turned the lamp up, but the oil was consumed; a red, sullen,
smoking wick was its only response. Then he felt in his pocket, and
struck a match.

The light revealed the dinginess of the little room. There was a bed,
covered with musty, ragged clothing; a table, littered with broken and
dirty dishes and pieces of stale food; a stove, cracked and greasy, and
one or two bare boxes serving as articles of furniture. But it was to
the bed Dave turned, and, with another match, bent over the shrunken
form that lay almost concealed amid the coarse coverings. He brought
his face down close, then straightened up and steadied himself for a
moment.

"He'll soon be well, don't you think, Mister? He said he would be well
when the holidays----" But Dave's expression stopped the boy, whose
own face went suddenly wild with fear.

"He is well now, Charlie," he said, as steadily as he could. "It is
all holidays now for him."

The match had burnt out, and the room was in utter darkness. Dave
heard the child drawing his feet slowly across the floor, then suddenly
whimpering like a thing that had been mortally hurt. He groped toward
him, and at length his fingers found his shock of hair. He drew the
boy slowly into his arms; then very, very tight. . . . After all, they
were orphans together.

"You will come with me," he said, at length. "I will see that you are
provided for. The doctor will soon be here, or we will meet him