"He'll be sittin' up with him," pointing to a dimly-lighted window.
"Who'll be sitting up?" I said.
"Oh, I forgot. You won't have heard. That is Mr. Strachan's room. At least I think that is the name. I only came here myself to work ten days ago. A poor homeless woman landed here last week from Ireland. One of those immigration agent devils over there took her last penny and sent her over to Canada, to starve for all he cared. She showed smallpox after she landed here and her little lad was with her. He took it too. Well, she died—but before she died she told her story. The old story, you know—had bad luck, you see, and the fellow skipped out and left her. The woman gets the worst of it every time, don't she?"
"She died!" I exclaimed. "And the little one? Where is the boy you spoke of?"
"That's him; that's what the light's burnin' for. Angus Strachan, so they say, paid all the funeral expenses, and they wanted to send the kid away somewheres—some hospital for them catchin' diseases. But Strachan acted queer about it. He wouldn't let them touch it. And he took it to his own room and said he would take care of it himself."
"And did they let him?" I asked.
"Let him. I just guess they did. They couldn't help it. You see he'd been in, monkeyin' round the smallpox already—so they had to. And he wrapped the kid up in a blanket and took it to his room. They say his light's never been out at night since."
"He has not taken the disease himself, has he?" I enquired.
"Oh, no; leastwise, I never heard tell of it. But them was queer actions for a young fellow, wasn't they? No accountin' for tastes, as the fellow said! Can you understand it yourself, sir?"
"I think I can," was my reply; "let us hurry on," and in a few minutes we were at Issie's house.