'Don't say you owe it to me,' said Roger,

sharply.

'Six pounds!' murmured Sandy.

'All right.

You know well enough what I

mean. You are the fellow who pays the money,

and who interests yourself in the poor man's

family, and all that.

'If you take my

Here you are!'

advice, Spens,' said Sandy, looking at the transfer of notes, 'you'll make that payment the last you offer to him-the very last. What you ought to do about it, is to go to a lawyer. Who is this widow, Dr Thorburn? Where does she live? How many children has she? Was she ever as well off before as she is now? And where was this dead man buried?

and who saw him buried? and'

That's a mouthful,' said the adviser, sarcastically.

'Have you arranged the meeting, Mr Spens? Am I cross-questioned at your instigation by this rather raw youth?'

'No, no,' said Haco. 'It's only Sandy's dogmatic way. He pitches himself into everything like that,'

And are these payments to go on for ever,' continued Sandy. Two pounds a-week for evernever to stop as long as Spens lives?-week after week two pounds-two pounds-all because a fellow came into the hospital and, apparently died under the towel! I'm not so very certain that he did die. I saw a fellow very like him one night doing the spring-heel business under a lamp-post. He seemed to me the living image of the man on the table. I don't say there was jookery-pookery, but I do say it looks to me very like as if there was.'

Roger opened a drawer, and, after rummaging a little, he drew out a signed certificate of death and handed it to Haco.

'Have you seen that?' he asked.

Haco looked at the paper, and, shuddering, dropped it.

'No, and I don't want to see it.

Mind your own

business, Sandy. This is a matter between me and Thorburn. It's no use putting these questions.' Sandy picked up the death certificate and read

it.

'I can't make out the name,' he persisted.

'Is it of the least consequence whether

or not?' asked Roger.

'What is his name?'

'Sandy, mind your own business.'

you can

'Spens, you are hanging a millstone round your

neck, and it will drag you under.'

CHAPTER VI

BOTANIZING

HACO and Sandy saw each other every morning now. The latter, on his way down to the Botanical Gardens, called at Haco's, and, sometimes, helped him to get out of bed, by the assistance of a tumbler of cold water unceremoniously douched from his wash-hand-stand to his pillow.

'Get up, you lazy beggar!' Sandy would say, when, with three or four hours' sleep to his own account, he would come into Queen Street and

find Haco not yet dressed, after a sufficient night's

rest.

Haco was no longer troubled with the appearance of the class-skeleton in his dreams, because, though he had an announcement telling him that a subject' was at his disposal on the dissectingroom table, he thought he could not possibly work in a dissecting-room in summer, and decided not to do it. He had anticipated attendance at Botany and Zoology with enthusiasm. He was to give Sandy a heat for at least one of the two medals. It was a pleasure to him to think that Sandy would not snatch at them with the same ease as he had showed at the extra-mural, though he would not grudge him success, if it came to him.

Get up, you lazy beggar!'

That had been Sandy's greeting once and again, as he showed himself at Haco's bedroom door; and the pair had gone down the hill to the lecture