"No," answered Jim, after the inevitable pause, "I hadn't. It were another man; but they wouldn't believe it. He gave evidence against me, and they took his word, not mine. Folks said it were proved against I, and so I was sent to prison. But I hadn't done it--I don't care what they say." "No, and I don't care, either!" cried Pat, with hot partisanship; "I know you didn't do it! It was they who were wicked and bad to send you to prison! But they had to let you out again, you see!" He spoke the last words with an air as of triumph, edging up towards Jim in a confidential way as he did so. The man was knitting his heavy brows, and looking as though he was not sure whether all this were not a strange dream. "They let me out to come here. I had three more years to run. They said if I would stop and do my duty it should count as though I had served my time. So I came, and here I be. It's the only home I've known since _that_ thing happened, and I don't want no other. I've got fond of _her_"--nodding towards the big lamp; "she looks kind at me now, and she's the only friend I've got. I'll bide here as long as I live. It's sore work going back to find all one's mates dead or changed to you." "Yes; don't go back," said Pat; "stay here with us. I'll be your friend, too. I should like a friend of my own. Father and mother don't count like that, because they _are_ just father and mother. I should like to have a friend as well. Let us be friends, Jim; and perhaps then _she'll_ let me be her friend too." Pat spoke in the simplest good faith, whilst Jim passed his hand across his eyes, and then looked down at the small figure beside him, rather as though he were not sure that it was not all a dream after all. Pat was not altogether sure of this either. It was certainly very queer to be up in the middle of the night just under the great lamp, sitting hand in hand with Jim and talking about being friends. He looked up into the rough face above him and smiled as he said-- "Jim, do you think we are _both_ dreaming?" [Illustration: "Jim opened a door close by."--_Page 35._] "It seems almost like it, little master," answered the man; "but we'll go out into the gallery, and get a breath of fresh air. That's the best thing to wake one up if one is getting be-fogged." Pat was delighted at this notion. He knew that there was an outside gallery running all round the glass house where the lamp lived. He had seen it from the boat when his father had rowed him out a little way in the evenings; but he had never been out on it before, and to go there at night for the first time seemed a very wonderful thing to do. He would see how the sea looked from up there in the moonlight; and perhaps Jim would be able to tell him how the sun managed to swim round from one side to the other before morning, and why it always came up in just the same place every day, and went down in the same place every night. Jim must know a lot of things, living so much up there, he thought.