"Got the key?" "Of course I've got the key." "Then hand it over." The old woman produced a key from a voluminous pocket in her dress. "Now, Freddy, none of your tricks? He's on the square?" She pointed the key at Bertie, to show the allusion was to him. The young thief took the key away from her. "He's as square as you! Come along, Ikey! Mother, you stop there till I come back. I want to have a little talk to you." Taking up one of the candlesticks, the lad led the way out of the room. Bertie staggered, rather than walked, after him. The house seemed to be very old-fashioned and very large. There were a curious number of staircases, and passages, and turns and twists, and ins and outs, and ups and downs. As Bertie followed his companion's lead it all seemed to him as though it were part of his dream; as though the house was built in the fashion of a maze, and he were bidden to find his way about it blindfold. At last he found himself in a room, the door of which he was vaguely conscious his companion had unlocked. Although very far from being luxurious, it was better furnished than the one they had left. There was a piece of carpet on the floor; there were two or three substantial-looking chairs, a horsehair couch, an arm-chair, a table, a chest of drawers with a looking-glass on top, and in the corner an old-fashioned four-poster bed with the curtains drawn all round. The closely-drawn dirty dimity curtains made one wonder if it was occupied already, but Freddy showed that it was not by going to it and drawing the curtains aside. "There's a bed for you, my bonny boy! The Queen ain't got a better bed than that in Buckingham Palace; and if you have got a marquis for a pa, you ain't seen a better one, I know you ain't. That's the captain's bed, that is, and if he was to know I'd made you free of it he'd have a word to say. But as he's gone to see his grandma, and perhaps won't be back for ever so long, we needn't take no count of what he says." Tired as he was, Bertie was not by any means so prepossessed by the appearance of the bed as his companion seemed to be. It seemed to him just a trifle dirty, and more than a trifle the worse for wear. The beds at Mecklemburg House were even better, while the beds at home were things of beauty and joys for ever compared to this. But still it was a bed, and a bed is a bed; and especially was a bed a bed to him just then. Freddy waited while he undressed. He even watched him get between the sheets, and drew the curtains when he was there. Then he went and left Bertie to sleep in peace in the captain's room. And he slept in peace. Just such a dreamless slumber as he had enjoyed in the Kingston "doss-house," and it lasted at least as long. This young gentleman had over-calculated his strength, and had not supposed he would have been so quickly wearied on his journey to the Land of Golden Dreams.