At length there came a morning when there was not a cent, and when, to perfect the day's despair, David woke with a burning soreness throughout his body--the consequence of having been caught the day before in a cold rain and having walked for several hours in his wet clothes. He crawled out of bed, but soon crept in again. His muscles could make no search for work that day. Tom proposed a doctor. David dismissed the suggestion; doctors required money. But, money or no money, Tom saw there had to be one thing--food. He sat gazing for several minutes at the boxing-gloves, their last negotiable possession, which his favour had thus far kept out of the pawnshop; then with a set face he put them under his arm and walked out of the room. He returned with fifty cents. That night Tom came home discouraged. He had hunted work all day, but no one wanted him. "Dey all wanted to hire a good suit o' clo'es," he explained to David. But the next morning he seemed confident. "I t'ought of a place where I t'ink I can git a job," he said, as he started away after having prepared for David a breakfast that David's feverish lips could not touch. His confidence was well founded, for that evening he entered the room with an armload of bundles. "Look at dis, will you!" he cried, dropping the parcels on the bed. "Bread, an' butter, an' eggs, an' steak--ev'ryt'ing. You got to git well, now! You're goin' to git fat!" David in his surprise sat up in bed. "Why, where did you get all those things?" "Didn't I say I'd git a job? Well, I did! In a big hardware store. I'm errand boy--ev'ryt'ing! De boss say, 'Tom do dis; Tom do dat.' I do 'em all, quick! De next minute I say to de boss, 'anyt'ing else?' He pays me six a week, I'm so quick." "But you've only worked a day. You haven't been paid already?" "Sure. I hands de boss a piece o' talk: me mudder's sick, an' I needs ready coin bad. So he pays me a dollar ev'ry day." David made a mental note that later there must be a few more remarks on the subject of lying; but this was not the time to reprove Tom's fib. He took the boy's hand in his hot, weak grasp. "You're mighty good to me, Tom," he said, huskily. Tom's face slipped to one side and twitched. His blinking eyes avoided David's gaze. "Oh, dat's nuttin'," he gruffly returned. "Nobody goes back on his pal." At the end of the first week of David's illness Kate Morgan returned home, having given up her position, and thenceforward she prepared most of his meals, chatted much with him, and lent him ten-cent novels. One result of their chats was that Kate became strengthened in her conviction that David had been a thief of great skill and daring. Contradiction availed him nothing. "Your last haul was a big one--you told me so yourself," she would say. "And only the top-notchers have your kind of talk and manners."