It was a bare little place, roughly board-partitioned off from the storehouse attic and lighted――in daytime――by a single window which was now rattling in its frame and letting a thin sifting of fine snow blow through the cracks. For furniture there was a pine packing box for a table, another which had been made into a sort of chair, and a third for a light stand on which stood a guttering candle. In a corner, with its head beside the light-stand box, was a cot, and propped up in the narrow bed, with a coat over his shoulders, the blanket pulled up to his chin, and his copy of “Hun and MacInnes” held so that the light of the candle would fall upon the page, was Purdick. “Hello, Donovan!” he croaked in the same hoarse voice that had said “Come in.” “Dug me up, did you? Pull up the easy-chair and sit down”――this last with a grin that was more than half ghastly. Larry dragged out the box chair and sat by the cot. But he didn’t take off his overcoat, or even unbutton it. “Been meaning to dig you up for a week or more,” he said. “Why didn’t you let some of us know you were sick?” “Didn’t want to be a nuisance. I’m getting over it all right, now.” “What was it?” “Touch of the grippe, I guess. I had it last winter. I don’t mind it so much, only I’m afraid it’s cost me my job at Hassler’s.” Larry looked around at the cheerless, unheated cubbyhole. “Gee!” he shuddered, “this is no place to be sick in. Why didn’t you report to the hospital?” Little Purdick’s smile was another of those half-ghastly grins. “I don’t mind telling you, Donovan. Your three-dollar-per-semester hospital fee, that you have to pay when you register, entitles you to two days sick-a-bed in a ward. If you stay over that time it’s a dollar a day extra. I didn’t have the dollar a day.” “Well, you’ve got to get out of this,” said Larry; and he said it gruffly because the pitifulness of Purdick’s case was getting next to him. “You’re going to room with me for the rest of the year. Dick’s gone over to the Omeg house and I’m needing a bunkie.” Purdick wagged his head on the blanket pillow. “I know you don’t mean to stick a knife into me and twist it round, Donnie, but you know very well that I can’t afford to go to Mother Grant’s. Let it slide and help me out a bit on this trig.――if you can stand the cold. I’ve lost a week on the stuff, and if I can’t make it up I’ll go bust on it.” “You chuck that book and listen to me,” growled Larry. “I say you’re going to room with me in the Man-o’-War, and what’s more, you’re going to begin it to-night――if I can find a night-owl auto hack anywhere this side of Chicago.” “But I tell you I can’t, Donnie. It’s as much out of my reach as――as――” “That’s all fixed,” Larry put in brusquely. “Your room rent’s paid, and your board, too; or they will be.” “But listen, you good old scout; I can’t take charity that way――you know I can’t. It――it would break me, world without end!” “It isn’t charity; it’s a――scholarship,” Larry stammered.