y, the doctor arrived. A couple of ribs
were broken, he said, after an examination which made poor Edwards groan
a good deal; but he did not think there was much more the matter, which
words were a great comfort to Crawley, who began to fear that he might
have been the cause of the boy's death. He was quite sufficiently sorry
and vexed as it was, and would have liked to nurse him if he had been
allowed.

It was just as well for his reading that they were not in the same
house, for he spent all the hours that he was out of school, and not
necessarily in his own tutor's, by Edwards' bedside. You cannot fall
with your side against a sharp angle heavily enough to break a couple of
ribs without feeling it afterwards, I can tell you, so you had better
not try, and Edwards suffered a good deal from pain and difficulty of
breathing for a few days, and when the inflammation was got down, and he
felt more easy, he was kept back by a great depression of spirits.

"One would say that the boy had something on his mind!" said the doctor
to Mr Cookson, "but that is impossible. At his age we possess no minds
worth speaking about to have anything upon;" and so he lost the scent
after hitting it off to go on the trail of a witticism, which after all
was not very brilliant.

Edwards was delirious one night, and astonished the housekeeper, a
motherly dame who sat up with him, by his talk on the occasion.

"Look here!" he said; and thinking he wanted drink or something she got
out of her chair and leaned over him; "let us have five shillings on the
black this time; it has gone red four times running, and that can't go
on, can it?"

"Certainly not," said Mrs Blobbs, wondering whatever the boy's
distracted fancy was running on. "Don't do it! Don't do it!" he then
cried. "I'll have nothing to say to it. Let us stand our chance
rather. Not that way; not that way; no, no, that's making bad worse. I
won't! I won't!"

That was only one night, however, the third after the accident, and he
was all right in his head next morning, only so terribly depressed.
Saurin never came near him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

COMPOUNDING A FELONY.

"I know what is the matter with you," said Crawley, replacing the pieces
on a backgammon board at the end of the game.

"Do you?" replied Edwards, turning if possible a shade paler, while his
heart palpitated under his sore ribs.

"Yes," continued the other; "you are worrying because you cannot get