However, I promised. He was too ill to say much; and I went to the next
door, and put it to Gum's wife that she should go and nurse Pike for
humanity's sake. Of course it was what she wanted to do. Poor thing! she
fell on her knees later, beseeching me not to betray him."
"And you have kept counsel all this time?"
"Yes," said the surgeon, laconically. "Would your lordship have done
otherwise, even though it had been a question of hanging?"
"_I!_ I wouldn't give a man a month at the treadmill if I could help it.
One gets into offences so easily," he dreamily added.
They crossed over the waste land, and Mr. Hillary opened the door of
the shed with a pass-key. A lock had been put on when Pike was lying in
rheumatic fever, lest intruders might enter unawares, and see him without
his disguise.
"Pike, I have brought you my lord. He won't betray you."
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE SHED RAZED.
Closing the door upon them, the surgeon went off on other business, and
Lord Hartledon entered and bent over the bed; a more comfortable bed than
it once had been. It was the Willy Gum of other days; the boy he had
played with when they were boys together. White, wan, wasted, with the
dying hectic on his cheek, the glitter already in his eye, he lay there;
and Val's eyelashes shone as he took the worn hand.
"I am so sorry, Willy. I had no suspicion it was you.
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