In the big main room of the sick-house lay the men who were ill, and, as Miles stepped in, on tiptoe because of his heavy shoes, the first thing he saw beneath the candlelight was Ned Lister's black head, half hidden under the coverlets of one of the bunks. Miles stole up to him. "Why, Ned, ha' you cheated the Doctor himself?" he whispered cheerfully.
Lister raised his head and looked at him, with his eyes very bright. "I'm cheating you all; yes," he said, with a laugh. "Go tell Hopkins be more cautious next time how he wastes so good a property as a serving man. A pity! If I die he'll be out my passage-money. Well, I always owed him a grudge for bringing me to this forsaken country, and I'll even scores now."
The thought seemed to please Ned mightily, for he laughed, till Doctor Fuller, stepping from the inner room, sharply bade him hush. "Get you to Master Hopkins and tell him the man is ill," he ordered Miles; and, as he let the boy out at the door, added, for his ear alone, "very ill."
Somehow Ned's overthrow frightened Miles more than any other illness. Lister had always seemed so tough and wiry that his succumbing at last set the boy to asking himself, in some fright, if he, too, might not fall ill. A soreness in his throat or an ache in his head made him nervous. He questioned Jack minutely as to how he felt before he was taken sick, and then he began at once to feel as Jack had felt. He started to tell his mother and get her to comfort him, but then he was ashamed; she was busy and anxious all the time for the people she was called on to nurse, and he was a great, strong boy, who, of course, would not be sick.
But one day his head ached in good earnest--no imagination; and next morning the ache was worse, so he was too stupid even to go out. Wrestling Brewster was ailing too, so Dolly and Love stayed by his bed to amuse him, and Miles was left quite alone. All day he sat toasting himself by the fire, till he was too warm and was sure his head ached because of the heat, so out he went, and tramped up and down the street till his teeth chattered with cold. He wanted no supper, but he went back to the house to bid his mother good night and get to bed early.
"Mother came home very weary and has lain down within," Dolly said, so he went into the bedroom. A cold light streamed in at the little window, but the corners of the low room were dark and the pallet was in shadow. His mother was stretched upon it, with the cloak that had been his father's wrapped round her, but at his step she raised her head. "It's you, my lad?" she asked, and reached out her hand.
