With the turning-off of the gas and the tucking of Steve's fat round face and head under the single blanket and quilt, the sheet gripped about his chin, there came a harsh, rasping cough from the room on his right. Jerry had opened. Steve ducked his head and covered his ears. The clown would stop in a minute, and then Mr. Dodd would drop off to sleep. Another sound now struck his ear--a woman's voice this time, with a note of sympathy in it. Steve raised his head and listened. "Say, Jess, ain't that awful? I knew Jerry'd get it on that long jump we made. I ain't heard him cough like that since we left T'ronto." "Oh, dreadful! And, Molly, he don't say a word 'bout how sick he is. Billy had to help him off with his-- Oh, just hear Jerry!" The talk ceased and Steve snuggled his head again. He wasn't interested in Jerry, or Molly, or Jessie. What he wanted was six hours' sleep, a call at 4.45, and his sample trunk. Another paroxysm of coughing resounded through the partition, and again Steve freed his ear. "Jerry ain't got but one little girl left, and she's only five years old. She's up to the Sacred Heart in Montreal. He sends her money every week--he told me so. He showed me her picture oncet. Say! give me some of the cover; it's awful cold, ain't it?" Steve heard a rustling and tumbling of the bedclothes as the girls nestled the closer. Molly's voice now broke the short silence. "Say, Jess, I'm dreadful worried 'bout Jerry. I bet he ain't got no more cover 'n we have. He's right next to us, and 'tain't no warmer where he is than it is here. I'd think he'd tear himself all to pieces with that cough. I hope nothin' 'll happen to him. He ain't like Mathews. Nobody ever heard a cross word out of Jerry, and he'd cut his heart out for ye and----" Steve covered his head again and shut his eyes. Through the coarse cotton sheet he caught, as he dozed off to sleep (Jerry's cough had now become a familiar sound, and therefore no longer an incentive to insomnia), additional details of Jerry's life, fortunes and misfortunes, in such broken sentences as-- "She never cared for him, so Billy told me. She went off with--Why, sure! didn't you know he got burnt out?--lost his trick ponies when he was with Forepaugh-- It'll be awful if we have to leave him behind, and--I'm goin' to see a doctor just as soon as we get to----" Here Steve fell into oblivion. Ten minutes later he was startled by the opening of his door. In the dim glow of the hall gas-jet showing through the crack and the transom, his eyes caught the outline of a girl in her night-dress, her hair in two braids down her neck. She was stepping noiselessly and approaching his bed. In her hand she carried a quilt. Bending above him--Steve lying in the shadow--she spread the covering gently over his body, tucked the end softly about his throat, and as gently tiptoed out of the room. Then there came a voice from the other side of the partition: