Billy did ask, and in such a way that the doctor’s attention was roused, and he whispered a few words to one of the students, who put on his hat and kindly told Billy that he was going home with him. The student was a tall man, and had difficulty in getting into the hole where Kate lay, but when he did, and looked into her pinched face and brilliant eyes, and listened to her quick, gasping breath, he merely gave his head a slight shake, and knelt down by the bedside to take her thin hand tenderly in his own. He had been very merry and chatty with Billy on the way, but now he was grave and solemn, and scarcely spoke a word. “Will she be better soon?” asked Billy at last, when the silence had almost sickened him. The student looked down on the white features of the sick girl, and said softly— “Yes—very soon.” There was another painful silence, and then Kate dropped off into slumber, with her hand resting trustfully in that of the student. Then the gentleman softly disengaged his hand, and motioned Billy out of the hole. “Where’s your father or mother?” he gravely asked, for the room was empty. “Not got any—mother’s dead,” said Billy. “Rodie looks after us,” and his hands and teeth clenched, as they generally did now when Rodie was in his thoughts, or at his tongue’s end. “Then I should like to see Rodie for a minute,” said the student with the same pitying look in his eyes, which Billy could not understand at all. “Could you find him now?” No, no, Billy could not do that; and did not know when Rodie would be at home, or where he was likely to be found. The student looked round the miserable hovel, and sighed and shook his head, and then left. He had ordered no medicine, he had said nothing about Kate, except that she was to be better very soon, yet Billy felt a vague uneasiness and distrust. The house seemed oppressively quiet, and Kate’s slumber unusually deep. What if she should sleep on and never wake? Billy crept into the hole again, and sat down on the floor beside the bed to listen intently to every breath Kate drew, holding her hand softly the while to make sure that she did not slip away from him as she slept. “Oh, if Rodie had only kicked me instead!” he thought for the hundredth time. “A boy is more able to stand kicks, and Rodie’s so strong—he’d kick anybody right through the world, whether there was a hole or not.” Late in the afternoon Rodie and the comical fiend came in boisterous and gleeful to dinner. They had been unusually successful in passing some bad florins, and had invested some of the proceeds in drink, part of which they had brought home with them to make a night of it, and laughed consumedly over the manner in which they had cheated one of their victims.