"It _ish_ fever, ten to one in fifties. Black death going, ma'am--_my_ luck. Look at him there, d----n him, he'sh got it." Levi looked at him surlily for a while with eyes that glowed like coals. "This comsh o' them cursed holes you're always a-going to; there's always fever and everything there, you great old buck goat." Dingwell made an effort to raise himself, and mumbled, half awake-- "Let me--I'll talk to him--how dare you--when I'm better--_quiet_"--and he laid down his head again. "When you _are_, you cursed sink. Look at all we've lost by you." He stood looking at Dingwell savagely. "He'll _die_," exclaimed he, making an angry nod, almost a butt, with his head toward the patient, and he repeated his prediction with a furious oath. "See, you'll send down to the apothecary's for that chloride of lime, and them vinegars and things--or--no; you must wait here, for Larkin will come; and don't you let him go, mind. Me and Mr. Goldshed will be here in no time. Tell him the doctor's coming; and us--and I'll send up them things from the apothecary, and you put them all about in plates on the floor and tables. Bad enough to lose our money, and cursed bad; but I won't take this--come out o' this room--if _I_ can help." And he entered the drawing-room, shutting Dingwell's door, and spitting on the floor, and then he opened the window. "He'll _die_--do you _think_ he'll die?" he exclaimed again. "He's in the hands of God, sir," said Sally Rumble. "He won't be long there--he'll die--I say he _will_--he will;" and the little Jew swore and stamped on the floor, and clapped his hat on his head, and ran down the stairs, in a paroxysm of business and fury. CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH HIS FRIENDS VISIT THE SICK. MR. LEVI, when Sarah Rumble gave him her lodger's message, did not, as he said, "vally it a turn of a half-penny." He could not be very ill if he could send his attendant out of doors, and deliver the terms in which his messages were to be communicated. Mr. Levi's diagnosis was that Mr. Dingwell's attack was in the region of the purse or pocket-book, and that the "dodge" was simply to get the partners and Mr. Larkin together for the purpose of extracting more money. Mr. Larkin was in town, and he had written to that gentleman's hotel; also he had told Mr. Goldshed, who took the same view, and laughed in his lazy diapason over the weak invention of the enemy. Levi accordingly took the matter very easily, and hours had passed before his visit, which was made pretty late in the afternoon, and he was smiling over his superior sagacity in seeing through Dingwell's little dodge, as he walked into the court, when an officious little girl, in her mother's bonnet, running by his knee, said, pompously-- "You'd better not go there, sir." "And why so, chickabiddy?" inquired Mr. Levi, derisively. "No, you'd better not; there's a gentleman as has took the fever there." "Where?" said Mr. Levi, suddenly interested. "In Mrs. Rumble's."