tood before the fire relating his
innocent adventures, and trying to dispel the cloud from Georgy's fair
young brow; and, when he did at last consent to go to his room, the
dentist shook his head ominously.

"You'll have a severe cold to-morrow, depend upon it, Tom, and you'll
have yourself to thank for it," he said, as he bade the good-tempered
reprobate good night. "Never mind, old fellow," answered Tom; "if I am
ill, you shall nurse me. If one is doomed to die by doctors' stuff,
it's better to have a doctor one does know than a doctor one doesn't
know for one's executioner."

After which graceful piece of humour Mr. Halliday went blundering up
the staircase, followed by his aggrieved wife.

Philip Sheldon stood on the landing looking after his visitors for some
minutes. Then he went slowly back to the sitting-room, where he
replenished the fire, and seated himself before it with a newspaper in
his hand.

"What's the use of going to bed, if I can't sleep?" he muttered, in a
discontented tone.

CHAPTER IV.

A PERPLEXING ILLNESS.

Mr. Sheldon's prophecy was fully realised. Tom Halliday awoke the next
day with a violent cold in his head. Like most big boisterous men of
herculean build, he was the veriest craven in the hour of physical
ailment; so he succumbed at once to the malady which a man obliged to
face the world and fight for his daily bread must needs have made light
of.

The dentist rallied his invalid friend.

"Keep your bed, if you like, Tom," he said, "but there's no necessity
for any such coddling. As your hands are hot, and your tongue rather
queer, I may as well give you a saline draught. You'll be all right by
dinner-time, and I'll get George to look round in the evening for a
hand at cards."

Tom obeyed his professional friend--took his medicine, read the paper,
and slept away the best part of the dull March day. At half-past five
he got up and dressed for dinner, and the evening passed very
pleasantly--so pleasantly, indeed, that Georgy was half inclined to
wish that her husband might be afflicted with chronic influenza,
whereby he would be compelled to stop at home. She sighed when Philip
Sheldon slapped his friend's broad shoulder, and told him cheerily that
he would be "all right to-morrow." He would be well again, and there
would be more midnight roistering, and she would be again tormented by
that vision of lighted halls and beautiful diabolical creatures
revolving madly to th