"Oh, don't, sir!" It was pitiful to hear the boy plead thus at the very thought. "Cut the sleeve," spoke the decisive doctor. "Oh don't, sir, do that!"--it was Mrs. Grant's turn to plead now--"'tis his best jacket." "Yes, and his best arm, being the right; better sacrifice a jacket than an arm"; and Mr. Barlow's scissors did the work, and laid bare Inna's surgical dressing. A nasty burn, but not unskilfully dressed for such young hands, they said; then they dressed it their own way, prescribed a sling for the arm, and a good night's rest for the boy. "And, my boy," said the doctor impressively, "I've heard two reports of you in the village, both bad and good; and I will let the good plead with me against the bad this once, and prevail. But remember, one noble deed doesn't make a life work: there's the boy's plodding on, learning, and doing as you're bid, and a hundred other things--the very foundation of a good useful life." "'Tis such humdrum work," grumbled Oscar. "And so is ours--noble art of healing, as it's sometimes called--eh, Mr. Barlow?" "Yes, it would be, if we weren't applying a salve to somebody's sore; and I suppose that's what almost all work amounts to--salving somebody's sore, easing the wheels of life somewhere," was that gentleman's reply. "And the humdrum drudging of a schoolboy, in learning and unlearning, is but the easing the wheels of his ignorant brain." Well, whether Oscar laid this new thought to heart or not, certain it is that he kept zealously to lessons and Mr. Fane, took kindly to Inna, and called her "a little brick," and all the many flattering names found in a boy's vocabulary. But his wound would not heal, for which the weather was blamed, and the constant friction he gave it, until his two doctors advised he should not race about so much; and so it came about that November was well on its way before the arm was well, and Inna saw that abyss of mystery, the Black Hole. Very like a lake, with an unfathomable hole in the centre--or said to be unfathomable, because it had been sounded by the villagers and no bottom found--over-spanned by a bridge, its water having some hidden outlet, and lying on the north side of Owl's Nest Park, among tangled bushes and faded herbage: such was Black Hole. It was on a sunless hazy afternoon when they paid their visit to the gloomy place. Oscar betook himself with boy-like zest to testing the depth of the so-called unfathomable hole with a long pole he used for leaping with, Inna watching him, and wondering the while whether the hole, with its darkly swirling waters, were bottomless, as it was said to be. "Have a care," her companion had warned her. "Don't lean against the rails of the bridge; the old thing is as crazy as crazy." But, like a girl, as he said afterwards, she must needs forget; and lo! as he poked and fathomed as he had often done before and made no new discovery, a scream rang out, and he looked up to find Inna and the rail had both vanished.