CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
HOW TOM DRIFT PARTED WITH HIS BEST FRIEND.
Charlie could not fail to discover before long that there was something wrong with my master.
Never before had he known him so silent, so spiritless, so mysterious.
No effort could rouse him into cheerfulness or conversation, and for the first time for three years Charlie felt that Tom was sorry to see him.
Naturally, he put it all down to the results of overwork.

Tom in his letters had always represented himself as engrossed in study.

Even the few hurried scrawls of the past few weeks he had excused on the same ground.

It never once occurred to the simple-minded schoolboy that a chum of his could possibly be struggling in the agonies of shame and temptation and he know nothing of it; he who knew so little of evil himself, was not the one to think or imagine evil where any other explanation was possible.
And yet Tom's manner was so strange and altered, that he determined, as soon as they should find themselves alone, to make an effort to ascertain its cause.
The opportunity came when the two youths, having bid farewell to Mr and Mrs Newcome, found themselves at last in Tom's lodgings in Grime Street.
"Well," said Charlie, with all the show of cheerfulness he could muster, for his spirits had been strangely damped by the irresponsive gloom of his old schoolfellow--"well! here's the den at last.

Upon my word, old man, I've seen livelier holes! Why don't you explore and find some place a trifle less dead-alive?
But I dare say it's convenient to be near the Hospital, and when a fellow's working, it doesn't much matter what sort of a place he's in, as long as there's not a row going on under his window--and I don't suppose there's much chance of that here," said Charlie, looking out into the black street with a kind of shudder.
Tom said nothing; he wished his friend would not everlastingly be talking of hard work and study in the way he did.