THE PEACOCK FEATHER (continued 3)

“I owe him,” said Anne, “some small payment for the shelter.” And she laughed, seating herself again in the armchair. Neatly, deftly, she drew the wool in and out across the hole, her ears alert to catch the sound of returning steps, or of carriage-wheels. The needle moved swiftly and with dexterity.

What is one to make of her? Lady Anne Garland—the proud, the much-courted, the to the world always aloof and sometimes disdainful Lady Anne Garland—sitting in a meagrely furnished little room by a fire of sticks and fir-cones, darning the green sock of a vagabond Piper! And infinitely more incomprehensible is the fact that he—this man on whom she had only twice before set eyes—was causing her to think of him in a manner not at all good for the peace of her own soul; especially as—and here a distinct confession must be made—she was already quite more than half in love with a man she had never even seen—the writer of books and letters, Robin Adair.

Human nature is a complex and curious thing, though by those who, having read thus far, hold the key to the riddle her nature may perhaps be understood.

Ten minutes later and a neat darn had replaced the gaping hole. Finding no implement handy with which to cut the wool she broke it, then placed the sock, the wool, and the needle again upon the table in much the same position they had previously occupied.

She got up from her chair and crossed to the window. The rain was still coming down in torrents, and the lightning was still frequent, but the thunder was muttering now at a distance.

Once more she looked back into the room. What a queer little room it was, and how entirely peaceful! Why did the villagers imagine it to be haunted? Could anything be more restful, more reposeful? And how very homely it looked in spite of its somewhat bare appearance! And then she stopped in her reflections, for the sound of wheels had struck upon her ear. A moment later the carriage came in sight down the lane. On the box, mackintoshed and stately, were both coachman and footman.

Anne laughed. “It really was unnecessary for them both to come,” she said to herself. And then Peter was out of the carriage and up the path to the door.

“It is here,” he said.

Anne came forward. “I am more than grateful,” she said. “And you must be terribly wet.”

“Oh, I shall dry again,” he said carelessly.

“It was very good of you,” said Anne.

“It was a pleasure,” said Peter, “to drive in a carriage.”

“Oh!” said Anne demurely.

“And—” he continued, and stopped. But in his heart he added, “To do any mortal thing for you, dear Lady!” But these speeches had a way of remaining in his heart without reaching his lips.

He unfurled an umbrella which he had purloined up at the house.

“The rain is not quite so furious now,” he said as he opened it.

“Oh, my hat!” said Anne. She was at the hearth and back beside him in an instant. But in the transit she had glanced for a moment at the green socks on the table.

Peter, holding the umbrella carefully over her, conducted her down the path. The footman was standing by the carriage door. Anne held out her hand.

“A thousand thanks!” she said.

Peter gripped her hand hard. “I was delighted to be of the smallest service,” he assured her.

The footman shut the door; Peter handed him the umbrella and he mounted with it to the box. The carriage, which had already turned, drove up in the direction of the white house on the hill.

Peter stood looking after it till it was out of sight, then went back into the cottage. He divested himself of his extremely wet coat and hung it on the back of a chair by the fire. Not the armchair; that he gazed at almost reverently, for had not She sat in it! Then he went to the table and took up the socks. Arrested suddenly by something he saw, he examined them both carefully.

“I am sure,” said Peter aloud, “that I only mended one sock, and now both—” He looked at a darn carefully. “Oh, oh!” said Peter, a light of illumination in his eyes. It was, however, almost incredible; he could hardly believe his senses. He lifted the sock nearer his face. A faint hint of lavender came to him. “Oh!” said he again; “the darling, the adorable darling!”

Peter crossed to his cupboard; he placed the sock carefully inside a sheet of clean manuscript paper and put it on a shelf.

Then he sat down in the armchair by the fire, filled and lit his pipe, and fell into an abstracted reverie, which lasted fully half an hour.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EVERLASTING WHY

And here it is necessary to introduce another character to the reader, one of whom there has already been a momentary glimpse, but who now comes forward to play his speaking part. He is indeed a small character, a young character, and might, at first appearance, seem insignificant, yet the part he has to play in Peter’s drama is fraught with much consequence. A very small pebble dropped into a pool can send out wide circles, so this small figure dropped into Peter’s life was to play a far-reaching and important part.

The little figure first made its appearance by peeping through the hedge in front of Peter’s cottage. It was a boy-child, aged perhaps some seven summers, and was clad in short blue serge knickerbockers and a blue jersey.

Peter himself was sitting by the door piping. The small figure thought his presence unobserved, but Peter’s blue eyes were watching him keenly. He sat very still as he piped, and the music was calling the child to him.

It was a friendly, seductive little tune that he was playing, and Peter saw the child move towards the gate. He did not look at him now, fearing by the slightest sign or movement to startle him. Suddenly Peter felt a light touch on his knee, gentle as the touch of a small bird’s wing. The child had stolen up the path and was beside him.

Peter’s heart leapt with pleasure. It was as if he had drawn a little wild woodland creature near him. He still did not move, but he let the music die away.

“I like that,” said the small boy, gazing at him with solemn eyes, “and I like you.”

Peter’s eyes wrinkled at the comers in sheer delight. It was a good many years since a child’s voice had spoken to him, since a child’s hand had been laid upon his knee.

“Oh,” said Peter, smiling with pretended laziness, “do you? Well, I fancy the appreciation is reciprocated. What’s your name?”

“Dickie Gordon,” responded the small boy. “I’m staying with my aunt and Lady Anne at the White House. I like Lady Anne.”

Peter laughed. “Your judgment and intuition are faultless, my son. The Lady Anne is the divinest woman the good Lord ever created.”

“Then you like her too?” queried Dickie.

“I might go farther than that,” said Peter reflectively; “adoration, worship, might be nearer my sentiments. But how, may I ask, did you find your way down here?”

Dickie smiled, an elfin smile of pure wickedness.

“I ran away from nurse. She’s got the baby in the perambulator. It’s a very young baby, and perambulators are dull things—they can’t get over stiles, or go across fields or even the tiniest kind of streams, not even streams with a plank across: the wheels are always too wide. And nurse doesn’t understand anything, not why fields are nicer than roads, and why it’s pleasant to stand still in a wood and listen, and why some walks are nice ways and some walks dull and horrid. She thinks everything’s just all the same. And I can’t explain things to her, things I know in my inside. So I just ran away and came to see you.”

“You did, did you?” responded Peter. And back his mind swung to the memory of another small boy, one of whom the Lady Anne had written to him, and of another non-understanding grown-up. Oh, those Olympians who, from their heights of common sense, cannot stoop to the level of childhood!—for stooping they assuredly would term it, though Peter took another view of the respective levels. Yet, whatever the levels, the fact undoubtedly remained the same: their utter and entire incapacity of seeing eye to eye, of hearing ear to ear, of feeling heart to heart with a child. And, mused Peter, it was unquestionable whose was the greater loss. And then he roused himself.

“But how about my duty?” he demanded. “Oughtn’t I to bind you, fetter you, and carry you back a prisoner to that perambulator, that very young baby, and that non-comprehending nurse?”

Dickie looked at him.

“You won’t,” he said comfortably; “besides, I want to talk.”

“Humph!” said Peter, again smiling lazily; “well, talk. I shall doubtless make a good audience, since the hearing of speech is now something of a novelty to me.”

Dickie looked at him again. The speech was not entirely clear, but the encouragement to talk was.

With a deep breath he began: “Nurse says this cottage is a bad place, and you’re friends with the Devil. Is he really an unpleasant person? You don’t look’s if you’d be friends with him if he were.”

“Hmm,” said Peter, dubious, his eyes nevertheless twinkling; “I cannot say that I have honestly a very close acquaintanceship with him—at least, I hope not. But I have never fancied him a pleasant person. He has”—Peter sought wildly in his mind for the best reason for the averred unpleasantness—“so little idea of playing the game.”

“Yes?” It was Dickie’s turn to be dubious now.

“Oh,” thought Peter distractedly, “I have not only to make statements, but I have to substantiate them!” Aloud he spoke, firmly, and with an air of conviction: “He does not play the game, because he pretends to be friendly when he isn’t, and he tells us things are nice when they aren’t.” This, at all events, was good and orthodox teaching. Peter patted himself on the back, so to speak.

“Like the apple what Adam and Eve ate,” said Dickie solemnly; “they thought it was going to taste so nice, and make them very wise, but it was a sour apple, and they had to go away out of the garden ’cause they ate it.”

“Exactly!” said Peter, much relieved that Dickie should be taking the initiative as chronicler of biblical events, feeling, be it stated, somewhat hazy on these subjects himself.

There was a pause. Then, with a deep sigh, Dickie spoke again.

“I wish I knew things.”

“What things?” asked Peter, amused.

“Lots of things,” said Dickie. There was a world of unconscious yearning in the child’s voice. “I want to know lots of things. What made God think the world? Did He think me from the beginning, ’cause He knew everything? Why did He wait till now to make me? I’d so lots sooner have been a Viking. Why doesn’t He let us choose what we are to be? Why are some days nice and other days horrid, though everything looks just ’xactly the same and just as sunny? Why don’t I know the whys of things?”

“Oh!” said Peter with a long-drawn breath, and a silence fell, while suddenly, and perhaps for almost the first time in his life, Peter faced the great eternal Question—the Everlasting Why of the Universe. And because he had no answer to give, because he had not as yet the faintest inkling of the answer, he was silent, though, all unconsciously, the child had put before him the problem his soul was inarticulately striving to solve.

“Why?” said Dickie again, gazing at him. And then Peter replied.

“You had better ask Lady Anne,” he responded, basely shifting the responsibility. Yet though he half acknowledged the baseness, he knew confidently that she must be better able to deal with the question than he, for surely she, enshrined where she was in his thoughts, would have some knowledge, some answer to give, something to which he might listen with as great confidence as the child beside him would listen.

And then suddenly down the lane came a shrill voice, causing Dickie to start and Peter to look up quickly.

“Master Dickie, Master Dickie!” The tones were unquestionably somewhat strident.

“That’s nurse,” whispered Dickie.

“So I concluded,” said Peter dryly. “What’s to be done?”

“S’pose I must go,” announced Dickie ruefully.

“Master Dickie!” The voice was close now, and the next moment a heated woman in nurse’s garb and wheeling a perambulator came into view.

Peter got up and went down to the gate, holding Dickie’s small brown hand close in his big one.

“I believe,” said Peter courteously, “that you are looking for Master Dickie; here he is.”

The woman paused, flabbergasted. “With you!” she ejaculated.

“With me,” said Peter, smiling. “And after all he has heard about me,” he continued seriously, “it’s a wonder that he ventured near this cottage.”

The nurse looked at Peter. There was something in his manner that checked the outburst of indignation that was perilously near the surface.

“I’ve been that worried!” she said, and she stopped to wipe her face with a large white handkerchief.

Peter appreciated her concern. It is unquestionably trying to lose a small boy entrusted to your care, especially on an exceedingly warm summer day, and have no notion what has become of him. Peter felt a bit of a culprit.

“I’m very sorry you’ve been bothered,” he said contritely. “He—” and Peter paused; he could not give Dickie away.

“I came to see him,” announced Dickie calmly, “because I wanted to find out what he was like. Now if you want me I’ll come home. Good-bye, Mr. Piper.” He held out his hand, which Peter shook gravely.

“You’re a bad boy,” said the nurse, virtuous indignation in her voice.

Dickie scorned a reply.

“He really hasn’t come to any harm,” said Peter apologetically.

“That’s as may be,” said the nurse with majestic significance, divided between her previous conception of Peter and the now very obvious fact that he was of gentle birth; “that’s as may be. But his aunt won’t care to hear of his goings-on, nor my Lady either, for that matter.”

“Lady Anne will understand,” protested Dickie, voicing Peter’s own opinion.

“She may and she mayn’t,” was the tart reply. “Now you’ll please to come home; we’re half an hour late as it is.”

“I said I was ready before,” remarked Dickie calmly.

The nurse jerked the perambulator round in a manner that caused the very young baby within to open its eyes in a kind of mild protest.

“I’ll come and see you again,” said Dickie confidently to Peter.

The nurse pulled him by the arm. “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Master Dickie.”

“Huh!” said Dickie, “you don’t know. I shall ask Lady Anne.”

And then the three disappeared down the lane.

“The Lady Anne,” remarked Peter to himself, “is evidently a divinity to another and much smaller person than I. I don’t exactly love that nurse,” he continued reflectively, “but I fancy she has her hands full.”

And whistling airily, Peter passed up the little path to the cottage.

CHAPTER XIX

PIPER AND AUTHOR

Up at the White House Lady Anne Garland was entertaining Millicent Sheldon. The entertainment to Lady Anne proved somewhat weighty. The carefully mended Millicent was a different person from the one she had previously known. Her whole aspect was altered in Anne’s eyes. She no longer saw her, as Millicent no doubt saw herself, a calm gracious Madonna, stretching out healing hands to a weary humanity. To Anne she was simply a very ordinary woman who had failed the man she had once loved—or professed to love—in his need.

And Anne suddenly realized that for all Millicent’s grand and noble statements she had no use for failures. Let a man have his foot firmly planted on the ladder of success, albeit on the lowest rung, Millicent spoke of him with gracious condescension, held out the hand of friendship to him. Those who had fallen from the ladder, or who were struggling towards it with little chance of reaching it, were not in her eyes worth a moment’s consideration. Truly the cracks were horribly, terribly conspicuous, and Anne had much ado to prevent Millicent from recognizing that she perceived them. She looked forward to the day of Millicent’s departure with a guilty hopefulness, a secret longing which she felt was almost indecent in a hostess. And then something happened to delay that day.

Dickie, the solemn-eyed Dickie, fell ill. It was one of those sudden swift illnesses of childhood that grip the hearts of parents with a terrible fear, and Anne and Millicent, who loved the small boy as if he were their own, watched the little fever-stricken body with grave anxiety, and dreaded to think what news the next mail to India might not carry.

The villagers came daily to inquire. Voices were hushed when the child’s name was mentioned. Peter alone, to whom no one ever spoke, did not know of the illness. He only wondered why Dickie, who had escaped his vigilant nurse more than once, did not come to the cottage.

And then one day, when the fever was running high, Dickie began a plaint, a piteous little moaning for the Piper. Backwards and forwards on the pillow tossed the small fevered head; the dry lips called ceaselessly to the Piper to come and pipe to him. In some vague way Dickie had confounded him with the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wanted Peter to take him through the mountain and show him sparrows brighter than peacocks and horses with eagles’ wings. Peter had told Dickie many a tale of fancy during his visit to the cottage.

“Who is it he wants?” asked the doctor sharply, watching the child. “Can no one fetch him?”

Anne, who was near the bed, stood up.

“I know,” she said. “I will write a note and send——”

The doctor, a little man with a crusty manner and a heart as tender as a woman’s, interrupted her testily.

“Can’t you go yourself?” he snapped. “I know what servants are when they’re sent on messages. The child is—I’m anxious, and as cross as an old bear,” he concluded.

Anne was already at the door.

“I’ll not be long,” she said. “Miss Haldane will be here if you need her. I’ll send her to you. Nurse is with the baby and Mrs. Sheldon is lying down. She was up most of last night.”

A few moments later Anne was walking down the drive. It was a grey afternoon, lapped in soft clouds, and with a little sad wind in the trees suggestive of autumn, though it was only August.

Anne felt a sensation of depression, a faint foreboding as of impending ill. She told herself that it was merely fatigue. Dickie would get well—she knew he would get well. And yet she did not really think that anxiety regarding Dickie was causing this depression. It was something more remote, something intangible and vague.

She determined not to think about it—to throw aside the slight uneasiness. Yet again and again it crept over her in insidious little waves, despite all her efforts to the contrary.

Peter was busy writing when the knock came on his door. Now, whether it was telepathy or clairvoyance is not known, but his heart jumped at the knock, and he got up quickly, opening wide the door.

“What is wrong?” he queried anxiously as he saw Anne’s face. He almost forgot to be surprised at her presence there.

“It’s Dickie,” said Anne. “He’s ill, very ill. The child has got some queer ideas into his head. He has mixed you up in an odd way with the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He has been talking about you a great deal—half in delirium, you understand. He wants you to pipe to him.” She stopped.

“Oh!” ejaculated Peter, his voice full of sympathy. “The pathetic little mite! I’ll come at once.” And then he, too, stopped, hesitated. “If you will go on,” he said, “I’ll follow you.”

“Can’t you,” asked Anne, “come back with me now at once? I fancy—I may be wrong—that the doctor thinks every minute is of importance.”

Peter flushed. “Of course,” he said, “I’ll come now. It was only—” Again he stopped, and Anne waited, wondering.

“Only,” said Peter desperately, “that I thought perhaps you would rather not walk with me. I—the villagers, you know, look upon me with disfavour.”

Anne raised her chin. There was a little regal air in the gesture. “But really,” she assured him, “I am not accustomed to consider the opinion of the villagers.”

“Oh, you idiot,” groaned Peter inwardly, “you idiot, you double-dyed dolt! Now you’ve offended her, though I protest your intentions were good.” Aloud he said meekly, “I’ll come with you at once.”

He turned and picked up his hat from a chair. As the long peacock feather caught his eye, again he groaned inwardly. He was for flinging the hat aside, but Lady Anne was watching him. He put it on his head desperately, and came out on to the path beside her, feeling for all the world a mountebank, a popinjay, a fool. Why, oh why! had he maliciously defied the Fates? Why, oh why! had this peacock feather lain in his path once long ago? And still further, why had he been idiot enough to pick it up and wear it merely in a spirit of contradiction, because once upon a time a woman had announced her belief in a superstition regarding peacock feathers.

He attempted to appear unconcerned, at his ease, but he was aware that the attempt was a poor one. Nor did the amazed glances of the villagers, as they crossed the green, tend to reassure him. Yet here was Lady Anne walking calmly, quietly, entirely at her ease, entirely dignified. Why was he ass enough to care for the glances of these yokels! Yet he knew it was not for himself that he cared, but for his Lady, his divinity, who had deigned herself to visit his cottage, to ask him with her own lips to perform a service for her. He longed for a flow of words to come to him, yet none but the most banal remark presented itself to his mind, therefore he walked beside her in silence.

At the entrance to the drive Peter suddenly shivered, why, he did not know, for the day, though grey, was hot. It was as if some slight indefinable feeling of apprehension had struck him.

Anne glanced at him. “Cold?” she queried, smiling.

“No,” responded Peter, smiling in response. “I fancy it was—according to the old adage—a goose walking over my grave.”

“Oh!” said Anne. And the slight feeling of uneasiness, which had temporarily departed, returned.

“Which, so say the superstitious folk,” continued Peter lightly, “denotes misfortune to the owner of the grave. Personally—” He broke off with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

“You are not a believer in omens and superstitions,” suggested Anne in conclusion. “So I might suppose. Your—your hat decoration is generally regarded as provocative of ill-luck,” she smiled.

Peter flushed. “It’s a fool thing to wear,” he said lamely, “but——”

“On the contrary,” said Anne demurely, “it fits in with your rôle. I believe it was the rumour of the peacock feather that first gave me the courage to ask you to play to me. It sounded fantastic, unusual. I dared to think that you might respond to an unusual invitation. The feather, I repeat, gave me courage.”

“Then,” said Peter gallantly, “I wear it with a good will as an omen of fortune’s favours. You did not, however, ask me a second time.”

Anne drew a quick breath. “No,” she responded. “Yet—you came.”

“Yes,” said Peter quietly, “I came.”

Anne might have spoken again, but they were at the door by now, and they passed into the hall together and up the wide shallow stairs.

The sick-room was in half light, for the curtains were partly drawn. The doctor was sitting by the bed, his eyes watching, grave. Miss Haldane was at a little distance. They both looked up as the two entered.

Anne crossed to the bedside, Peter following.

“Dickie,” said Anne, softly and distinctly, “I have brought the Piper to you.” She sat down and took one of the small hot hands in hers.

Peter came to the foot of the bed. He drew his pipe from his pocket. As the first sweet notes of the pipe filled the room Dickie lay still. It was the friendly, seductive little tune Peter had first played to the child. No one stirred and the magic piping breathed through the air.

“More,” said Dickie, as Peter stopped. And the request was quiet, conscious.

Peter came a little nearer. “This, Dickie, is the sleepy song the Pied Piper played the children when he carried them away to the Wonderful Land. So shut your eyes and listen, and you will sleep and dream of running streams, and flowers, and of cool green grass, and beautiful birds, and horses with eagles’ wings, that will carry you away gently on their backs to the place where children get well.” Peter’s voice dropped to a murmur.

And then once more came the music, a low crooning lullaby, full of adorable restful tenderness. Dickie’s eyes closed drowsily. The music crooned on, rocking softly, soothingly. Then Dickie gave a little gentle sigh, his fingers relaxed their hold on Anne’s, his small hand fell open on the counterpane, and Dickie slept.

“Thank God!” breathed the old doctor. And he took off his spectacles and wiped them.

Peter looked at Anne. She nodded, and rose from her chair. They stole softly from the room together. They passed down the corridor. Then Anne turned and spoke.

“I can’t say anything but ‘Thank you.’” She smiled, a little wavering smile, and her eyes were misty.

“Oh,” said Peter with a huge sigh, “I’m glad. He’s—he’s such a jolly little chap.”

And then he looked up, for a woman was coming towards them.

“It is Mrs. Sheldon, Dickie’s aunt,” said Anne, explanatory. “She—” And she broke off, amazed at the sudden rigidity of Peter’s face.

“Oh!” said Millicent as she saw the two. And she stopped dead.

“What is it?” queried Anne, astonished. “Do you two know each other?”

“I once had the pleasure of Mr. Carden’s acquaintance,” said Millicent stiffly, “but now——”

“Mr. Carden!” ejaculated Anne. And a light dawned upon her, a light of painful significance.

“I was not aware he was in the house,” said Millicent coldly. “I was not aware that you knew him.”

Then Peter spoke. “As Peter Carden Lady Anne does not know me,” he said steadily, though his face was white. “She knows me only as Peter the vagabond Piper.”

“An alias,” said Millicent scornfully. “One, no doubt, of several.”

Anne was waiting, silent. Peter had a sudden thought that she was waiting for him to speak, to deny the accusation if he could. He felt utterly and entirely weary.

“Oh no!” he said bitterly; “only one other—Robin Adair.”

“Oh!” said Anne, shrinking as if the name had been a blow.

“It really does not signify what you choose to call yourself,” said Millicent. “But I do not care that my friends should be deceived.”

Peter drew in his breath sharply. He looked straight at her, and in her eyes he could read the true cause for her anger. “You are right,” he said quietly. “And I have deceived her.” He turned to Anne. Her head was erect, her face white, motionless. Indignation, anger, contempt, he saw all three in her eyes.

He turned without a word and passed down the stairs, across the hall, and through the hall door, which he closed softly behind him as he went.

CHAPTER XX

FAREWELL

The night was far spent. For hours Peter had sat by his table with writing materials before him, and at length his letter was written, ended.

“It is the last time I shall write to you, but I ask you to condone my conduct—at least, sufficiently to read what I have written. I know I have no excuse to make. To say that my deception arose from the knowledge that if you once knew Peter the Piper and Robin Adair as one and the same I should lose your letters is of course none. I deceived you deliberately, and broke the compact that our identities should remain unknown to each other. Though I did not first break it, nor was it broken of my will. Being broken by fate, however, I should have told you.

“And by now you will have realized that you extended the hand of friendship to one who had entirely forfeited the right to it. Is it, perhaps, any compensation to you to know that your letters, your kindness, have at least been received with humble gratitude, with the most intense and overwhelming pleasure by one however unworthy to receive them?

“I shall leave this cottage at daylight. My presence here longer would, I know, be distasteful to you. I have no right to ask your forgiveness, yet if one day you could extend it to me, and think less hardly of me, I should be glad. The one thing I can do, and believe you would wish me to do, is to destroy your letters. I cannot destroy the memory of them—that is impossible, and I dare to hope that in your generosity you will not grudge it to me.

“Presently I shall try to write again, and if ever fate should throw my work in your path, and you deign to read it, then know that whatever in it is of worth, whatever is in the smallest degree of good, has been inspired by the thought of you.

“For all your blessed kindness, for the fact that you are you and are in the world, I shall throughout my life be grateful.

“Perhaps one day I may get the chance to atone.

“Peter Carden.”

The letter written, Peter got up from his chair and crossed to the fireplace. In a few moments a flame sprang up, and some bluish papers twisted and shrivelled in its heat. Presently nothing was left but a small heap of grey ashes.

Peter sat very still. There was a lump in his throat, and he swallowed hard once or twice, but his eyes were dry. A bird chirped in the bushes outside the cottage; it was answered by another and another. The air became full of a chorus of twitterings and chirpings.

Peter roused himself. He picked up his hat and a bundle from the table and went to the cottage door. In the east the sky was flushing to rose and lavender. Peter went down the path. He opened the little gate. A moment later it had swung to behind him, and he was walking down the dusty road.

CHAPTER XXI

A WOUNDED SKYLARK

Miss Haldane was worried, perturbed. Her usually cheerful old face was wrinkled into lines of perplexity, her eyes were anxious.

Something was wrong at the White House. Dickie had slept peacefully throughout the night, and with the extraordinary recuperation of children, had demanded bread and milk on awaking. It was perfectly natural to suppose that an air of jubilation should prevail. Yet Lady Anne was pale, silent, aloof; Millicent Sheldon slightly cold and frigid. What in the name of wonder did it signify? Vaguely Miss Haldane connected the extraordinary atmosphere with the Piper. It was true that he had been accountable, under Providence, for Dickie’s marvellous recovery, yet Miss Haldane distinctly regarded him as a bird of ill-omen, and in her heart bitterly regretted that necessity had called him to the house.

Throughout the day she fidgeted and fluttered interiorly, keeping sharp and anxious watch on Anne’s pale and almost stern face, without, however, in the least appearing to do so. At tea-time she found herself alone in the drawing-room with Millicent, Anne being in Dickie’s room.

Then Miss Haldane could contain her anxiety no longer. She disliked Millicent Sheldon, but it was a case of any port in a storm. Having poured out tea and handed Millicent a cup, she prefaced her first remark by a slight and nervous cough.

“Anne looks very pale,” she said tentatively. “I hoped to see her looking better now our anxiety is practically at an end.”

“Yes,” said Millicent, taking a sip of tea.

This was unsatisfactory. Miss Haldane returned to the charge more openly.

“I hope,” she said, “that nothing has worried her?”

Millicent put down her teacup. “It is distinctly unfortunate,” she said, “that that man who called himself Peter the Piper should have come into this neighbourhood.” She made the remark with a calm majesty of manner.

“Oh?” queried Miss Haldane, pricking up her ears and looking for all the world like a terrier on the scent of a rat; “do you know anything about him?”

“Only that he has spent three years in prison for forgery,” said Millicent gravely. “Anne has got unaccountably familiar with him in some way, and is naturally vexed to find her friendship misplaced.” She puckered her smooth white brow with an air of grave, gracious anxiety, but there was a hard expression in her eyes.

Miss Haldane ruffled like a small angry bird, the terrier expression forgotten.

“Lady Anne,” she said with dignity, “is certainly not familiar with him. You must have been misinformed.”

“Really!” Millicent lifted her eyebrows coolly. “From Anne’s own showing yesterday, she knew considerably more about him than probably you or I had the smallest idea of. She has not seen fit to confide in me, but it was entirely apparent.”

Miss Haldane sat very upright. “If Anne did know more of him than we imagine,” she remarked firmly, “it shows that he was a more desirable person to know than I had supposed.”

Millicent controlled her temper admirably. Of course, it was entirely absurd, but the old thing was, unquestionably, trying to snub her.

“A man who has been in prison!” she remarked, with an air of quiet finality and an exasperating little laugh.

Miss Haldane’s usually dim old eyes blazed. “Under God we owe Dickie’s recovery to him,” she said with quiet dignity. “Might not that make us a little charitable towards him?”

And Millicent, for her outward imperturbability of manner, was annoyedly conscious that Miss Haldane had scored.

And then Anne walked in.

“Am I interrupting confidences?” she asked, with an attempt at her usual lightness of manner. “Dickie is a fraud; he is demanding bread and jam, or at least toast and honey. I consider he has basely deceived us all.”

And then she saw that the atmosphere was really strained, tense. She pretended blindness, however, and, sitting down, asked for some tea. While drinking it she made a few airy remarks, to which Miss Haldane responded absent-mindedly, and Millicent with a pained and almost holy silence.

Then Millicent got up. “I am going to see Dickie,” she said.

As the door closed behind her, Miss Haldane gave a sigh of relief.

“How I dislike that woman!” she said.

“I saw she had ruffled you,” said Anne soothingly.

“She was impertinent,” remarked Miss Haldane with dignity.

“Millicent! Impertinent!” Anne’s eyes were big with amazement. “My dear Matty!” She might be many things, but impertinent seemed the last word to connect with the large statuesque Millicent.

“Impertinent,” said Miss Haldane firmly. “It is only her size that makes it not usually apparent. If she were a small woman, it would be obvious to the meanest intelligence. And she is distinctly ungrateful. Whatever that man has done, whatever he is, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”

“Oh!” said Anne, her eyes clouding; “she was talking about him?”

“Yes. My dear, have you considered that even if he did wrong in the past he may have repented? And he did help Dickie.”

“Yes,” said Anne slowly; “he helped Dickie.”

“Even if,” continued Miss Haldane earnestly, “he has once been in prison, he cannot be altogether bad at heart, or a child—” she stopped. To her own surprise, the contradictory old thing was defending the Piper.

“Oh, prison!” said Anne vaguely.

“Yes; didn’t you know? Was not that why you were vexed—angry?”

Anne gave an odd little laugh. “No, Matty, dear. To be candid, it was not that at all. Somehow—it’s queer, isn’t it?—I never thought of that.”

“Then why—?” began Miss Haldane, perplexed, vague.

“Oh, it’s a complicated situation,” said Anne dryly; “but—well, every atom of pride I ever possessed has been dragged in the mud, humbled, abased. Now you have the truth; and for Heaven’s sake don’t ask me any more!” Again the hard look crept into her face. She got up and moved to the window.

Miss Haldane watched her. Had there been any truth in Millicent’s words? Had she seen more of this man than Miss Haldane had supposed? Clandestine meetings, secret letters, fluttered rapidly before Miss Haldane’s mind. Then she looked at Anne again. It was impossible. Whatever had happened, it was certain that it was nothing of which Anne need really be ashamed.

And Anne, silent at the window, had bitterness in her heart; she felt her pride, as she had said, humbled, dragged in the dust. This man to whom she had written had amused himself at her expense. As one person he had received her intimate letters, as another he had been the recipient of gracious favours on which he had doubtless put a totally wrong construction. Posing as two men, yet in reality one, he could compare the favours she had accorded both. The rose, the green sock—her face burnt at the thought of them. The one man, Robin Adair, smiling at her gracious letters, and smiling still more at her gracious treatment of the vagabond Piper.

It was monstrous, preposterous! How he must have laughed in his sleeve when she told him of her inclination to confound the two men. Anger and indignation were in Anne’s heart at the thought, yet deeper still was an odd little ache, and the fact that it existed, and she was conscious of it, curiously enough increased her indignation against Peter.

The door opened softly, and the footman entered with a letter on a tray. He crossed to the window where Anne was standing. As she saw the letter lying there, a hot flush mounted in her face. She took it, holding it irresolutely in her hand. When the door had closed again, she broke the seal.

There was a long silence. At last Miss Haldane looked round. Anne’s face was quivering.

“What is it?” asked Miss Haldane, her voice full of perplexed anxiety.

“Only,” said Anne, with a half sob, “that I have torn the little young wings from a skylark.”

CHAPTER XXII

CANDLES AND MASSES

I

If at the beginning of the last chapter Miss Haldane was perturbed, worried, perplexed, so, rather more than two months later, Muriel Lancing was perturbed, worried, perplexed, also; and for the same cause, namely, the strange demeanour of the Lady Anne Garland, who had returned to town at the beginning of November.

She was changed, she was totally different, so sighed Muriel, reflective, meditative. Where was her former charm? her former sweet kindliness? her faith, her trust, her buoyancy—in short, her everything that went to make up the Anne Muriel knew and loved? An obsession seemed to have come upon her. She was cynical, hard, the speaker of little bitter phrases, deliberately calculated to wound and hurt. She was not, as Muriel reflected, Anne at all, but a mask, a shell of a woman, in which deep down the real Anne was imprisoned, buried.

“If only she would speak,” sighed Muriel to herself. “If only the mask could be removed for a moment the real Anne would be liberated. Confession, so says dear old Father O’Sullivan, is good for the soul. It would be incalculably good for Anne’s. But she won’t make one. And short of asking her straight out to do so, which would inevitably fix the mask on tighter still, I can do nothing.”

But, all the same, Muriel went off to the Oratory and set up a candle to St. Joseph, telling him pretty lucidly the whole state of affairs and requesting him to do something.

Now whether it was the intervention of St. Joseph, or whether it was that the real imprisoned Anne could bear her solitary confinement no longer, must be a matter for pure conjecture: but on the next occasion that Muriel visited Anne’s house in Cheyne Walk she was distinctly conscious that though the mask was on there was a tiny crack in it, and through the crack the real Anne was looking with a kind of dumb pleading.

In a twinkling Muriel’s finger was towards it, in, of course, the most insidious and hidden way imaginable. It is useless to attempt to describe her methods; they were purely feminine, entirely delicate. At length the shell, the mask, fell asunder, and the real Anne, being liberated, spoke. It was an enormous relief to her, and from the very beginning up to Millicent’s disclosure she confided the whole story to Muriel, who watched her with her greeny-grey eyes full of sympathy.

“Oh, but,” cried Muriel as she stopped, “I quite understand your anger. Of course, it’s very difficult to put into exact words why you are angry, the whole situation is so extraordinarily complicated. But,” she concluded, “any woman with the smallest modicum of sense must see why. And the fact that Millicent was the person there at the time can’t have made things a bit nicer.”

“It didn’t,” said Anne quietly. “But I haven’t finished yet. He wrote to me.”

“Yes?” queried Muriel.

“It—his letter swept away all my anger. I—I understood.”

“Of course,” Muriel nodded, “there is his point of view.”

“I saw it,” said Anne. “I realized—or thought I realized—the utter loneliness that made him act as he had done. I—I wrote to him.”

“Yes?” queried Muriel again, and very gently.

“I said—oh, I said a good deal,” confessed Anne. “And—and he has never replied. Oh, don’t you see it’s that that hurts? I said things I would never have said if I hadn’t believed he was longing for me to say them, if I hadn’t”—Anne’s face was crimson—“wanted to say them. I was so sure I’d hear from him again. And—and there was only a cruel silence. I’d give anything never to have written that letter.” Shamed, broken, she looked piteously at Muriel. Anne was proud, and she was young. She did not yet know that there is no shame in giving love, offering it purely, finely, as she had done. Is not God Himself daily making the offering, an offering from which too many of us turn away?

“But, darling Anne,” cried Muriel, “perhaps—surely he could not have received it.”

Anne shook her head. “It’s what I’d like to believe,” she said with a little bitter laugh, “what we’d both like to believe. But it’s no good. I sent it to his publishers, the same address as that to which I’d sent the others. Oh, no! that kind of letters don’t miscarry. I have misunderstood all through.”

“Darling!” said Muriel softly.

There was a long silence, broken only by an occasional little sputtering of the coal in the fire, and the rumble of wheels and clack of horses’ hoofs without. And in the silence Muriel was giving very deep thanks to St. Joseph that Anne—her beloved Anne—was once more restored to her. Also she was cogitating in her own mind still further benefits to be asked of him.

Presently Anne broke the silence.

“Muriel, I’d rather you should forget—that we should never speak again—about what I’ve told you this afternoon.”

Muriel took up an illustrated paper from a side table.

“Hats,” she announced sententiously, “will be worn small this winter, and skirts mercifully not quite so tight. Have you noticed Mrs. Clinton? She’s positively indecent. I blush scarlet if I’m with a man when I meet her.”

Anne laughed, though there were tears in her eyes.

“Muriel,” she said, “you’re the silliest and dearest little elf in Christendom.”

II

Muriel made more than one further journey to the Oratory to explain matters to St. Joseph, on each occasion presenting that delightful saint with a candle. The first time—subsequent to Anne’s confession—that she went to the Oratory she gave him two, one being for thanksgiving.

Also she invited Father O’Sullivan to tea on an occasion when Tommy, by Muriel’s suggestion, had taken Anne to skate at Prince’s.

Father O’Sullivan was a short, stoutish man, with grizzled hair, small twinkling eyes, and a mouth that had the kindliest twist of a smile imaginable. To know Father O’Sullivan for an hour was to love him. To know him for longer was to love him better. Muriel had known him from her babyhood.

This afternoon, having invited him to tea, she plied him with cakes and quince sandwiches, which latter his soul adored, and talked in a gay and inconsequent fashion of airy nothings, to which Father O’Sullivan responded after the manner of Irishmen, be they priests or laymen.

But on the conclusion of the meal she dropped into a pensive mood, and sat with her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her pointed chin resting in her cupped hand, gazing into space with great dreamy eyes.

And then all at once she roused herself and looked across at Father O’Sullivan.

“Father,” she said seriously, “I want you to say a Mass for me.”

“You do, do you?” said Father O’Sullivan, stroking his chin. “And with what intention?”

“Well,” said Muriel, reflective, “it’s not quite easy to explain. I think I’d better tell you the story.” And she launched forth, omitting names at the moment, though at a future date she happened inadvertently to mention Peter’s.

“Well, now,” said Father O’Sullivan as she ended, and his eyes were twinkling, “is it just a little small story like that you’d have me be repeating at Mass, for I’m thinking it will take just no time at all.”

“Oh, don’t laugh at me!” begged Muriel. “Don’t you see how difficult it is to put into words what I want!” She dropped her hands in her lap and gazed at him tragically.

“Well, but have a try,” urged Father O’Sullivan. “Perhaps I can be helping you out.”

“First, then,” said Muriel, “I want her to be happy again, and I don’t see how that can be unless she hears from him, and even that alone would be no good, because I’m sure to be really happy she’d have to marry him, and you see he has committed forgery. If only that could be untrue—but it’s impossible, and I don’t see how anything can come right,” she ended despairingly.

Father O’Sullivan rubbed his hair up the wrong way. “And it’s a Mass with the intention of things coming right you want me to say, when all the time you’re feeling sure they can’t,” he remarked severely. “And if I’m going to say it that way myself, what kind of faith do you think I’m going to have in it?”

Muriel looked at him contritely. “But don’t you see—” she began.

“Oh, I see fast enough,” he responded. “Let’s get at what you want the other way round. To begin with, you want the young man never to have committed the forgery, and then you want to run through the whole gamut till they live happily ever after. And all the time you’re wishing it, and wanting me to pray for it, you’re telling yourself it can’t be. Isn’t that so?” His twinkling old eyes belied the half-severity of his words.

“Oh, but,” said Muriel, “it’s—it’s such a lot to ask.”

Father O’Sullivan leaned forward and tapped the forefinger of his right hand in the palm of his left.

“Faith, my child, is not asking God for bushels and setting out a pint measure to catch them in. It’s a good old saying, but not my own, more’s the pity of it. Now, do you want me to say this Mass for you with the intention we’ve arranged?”

“Yes,” said Muriel firmly.

“And you’ll come to it, and believe that it will be answered, whether in your way or God’s you leave to Him?” he asked gravely.

“Yes,” said Muriel again.

Father O’Sullivan nodded his head approvingly. “To-morrow morning at eight o’clock I’ll be saying it then,” he said, “and you’ll be praying too.” He leaned back in his chair.

“Of course,” ventured Muriel, “it’s rather a complicated thing to put into words.”

Father O’Sullivan smiled, a merry, twinkling humorous old smile. “Faith, I’ll be getting it into some kind of shape,” he promised. “And if we could hear all the prayers sent up to heaven I’m thinking we’d find many a muddled phrase down here straightened out by the holy saints as they carry them up to God’s Throne. And no matter what the muddles are, the answer’s clear enough when it comes.”

And then the door opened and Anne, Tommy, and General Carden walked in.

Muriel gave a little gasp. “I thought you were having tea at Prince’s,” she said.

And Father O’Sullivan, as he watched her face with wicked pleasure, realized—and it did not take a vast amount of sagacity to do so—that one at least of the three was concerned with the story she had just confided to his ears. And as it obviously was not Tommy, and he concluded he might rule out the white-haired military-looking man, it left only the tall, graceful woman who crossed to a chair by Muriel and began pulling off her gloves.

“We got bored,” said Tommy; “at least Anne did, and we decided to come home to tea. And we met General Carden on the doorstep, and here we all are. And if you’re too flustered for some reason to introduce everybody nicely, I will.”

“Don’t be silly, Tommy,” said Muriel, laughing and recovering her equanimity. “Ring the bell, and we’ll have fresh tea made.”

“No need,” said Tommy. “I saw Morris in the hall and told him.” And he sat down by Father O’Sullivan. General Carden took a chair near Anne.

“I was sorry not to find you at home when I called last Thursday,” he said. “Your servant told me you were at home on Tuesdays.”

“Yes,” said Anne. She hesitated, half doubtful. Then she added: “But perhaps you’ll come another afternoon? At-home days are not very satisfactory. Shall we say Wednesday?”

“I shall be delighted,” returned General Carden. “We had, if I remember rightly, a long argument the last time we met, about a book. Let me see, what was the author’s name?” He wrinkled his brows, reflective, thoughtful.

Anne turned to put her gloves on the table beside her. “Robin Adair, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly.

“Ah, yes, of course!” replied the old hypocrite.

Muriel glanced at Anne. “I wish,” she reflected with admiration, “that I could act as well. I nearly gave myself away just now, when they all descended on me like an avalanche. And I’d bet my bottom dollar Father O’Sullivan guessed something.” Which bet, if there had been any one to take her on, Muriel would certainly have won.

Anne, as she drove towards Chelsea half an hour later, wondered vaguely why she had asked General Carden to tea with her. Finally she decided that it was for the obvious reason that he wanted to come, and she would have been rude if she had not done so.

And Father O’Sullivan, as he walked home, ruminated on the tangled story Muriel had told him. It was only one of the many tangles in the world, and he knew it, but it had been brought directly to his notice, and he had a very simple and perfect faith that the good God would unravel the knots in His own way and at His own time.

CHAPTER XXIII

DUM SPIRO, SPERO

You know how there are times in our lives when the days hang heavily, each moment dragging on leaden feet, weighted all the more grievously because we are ready to protest to our fellow-men, to ourselves perhaps, that the days are not grey, but each one as full of light as we would have it be. And if you do not know you are lucky. Or are you lucky? Are not the heavy clouds, which temporarily hide the golden sunshine, better than a dull monochrome of a life, in which neither cloud nor sunshine is existent? For is it not by the very brightness of the sun which has been, that we recognize the clouds which now obscure it? It is when the sun has never shone in its fullest splendour for us that we do not recognize the existence of the clouds, for to say that any life is passed in one unbroken dream of golden glory is to make a statement which one will dare to denounce as untrue. If there be the gold of joy, so there will come the clouds of sorrow, and a life without clouds is of necessity one without sun, a monochrome of a life, peaceful perhaps, but lacking in intensity.

The days passed slowly for Anne. They no longer went by with the gay carelessness of a year, six months, nay, only three months ago. Take an interest out of your life, however chary you may have been of admitting the existence of that interest to your secret heart, and then fill your days with gaiety, friends, books, anything and everything but the one thing you want, and you will find it a method of subtraction and addition which is apt to result in a distinctly unsatisfactory sum total.

It is not to be supposed, however, that Anne wore her heart upon her sleeve for society daws to peck at. She hid it and its little ache deep under a charming courtliness which was, if anything, more charming than usual. And if she smiled a little more frequently, if a bon mot came more readily to her lips, after all they were but attempts to bury the heartache a bit deeper, and it was at least the real Anne who once more walked the earth.

She saw Millicent occasionally, but only occasionally. There was now between them a civil exchange of courtesies; an assumption, but merely an assumption, of the old friendly footing. On a certain afternoon in the White House Millicent had attempted to give a version of a particular story to Anne. To which Anne had responded that she already knew it. Millicent, however, had attempted to explain, and in explaining had told Anne one or two things Anne had not before known, which things had caused those aforementioned cracks in Millicent to gape with such ominous wideness that Millicent herself suddenly perceived them, and, worse still, saw that Anne perceived them. Anne had quietly announced that she preferred not to talk of the matter further: the part of it that concerned Millicent was her own affair, the part of it that concerned herself was hers. And so it had concluded, outwardly at all events. But it did not require a vast amount of acumen to perceive that their former friendly relationship was of necessity a trifle strained.

It is not to be inferred from this, however, that Anne and Millicent were anywhere near warfare with each other. Anne was far too much grande dame for such a proceeding. Also her sentiments towards Millicent were now those of pure indifference. Millicent had never counted a great deal in her life, she now merely counted less. Of Millicent one cannot be so sure. She had seen Anne’s face on that historic afternoon; she had seen Peter’s face. She had therefrom drawn her own conclusions—conclusions to which Anne’s subsequent refusal to discuss the matter had given further weight.

Millicent would have liked to think of Peter as pining in quiet grief for her, leading a kind of piano life of minor passages in which she stood for the keynote. She had—to be candid—pictured Peter in her mind as a prematurely grey-haired man, slightly bowed at the shoulders (from remorse), gazing fervently at a photograph of a Madonna-like woman with a child in her arms (Millicent’s latest by Lafayette), sorrowfully considering the fact that the child was not his, and announcing to Heaven that the thought of her should guide him at last to its Gates. It must be allowed that it was a distinct jar to find him not at all grey-haired, not at all bowed at the shoulders, but jaunty, debonair, carrying a ridiculous hat with a peacock feather in his hand, and talking intimately to one of her own friends, one, too, who had kept her acquaintanceship with him a dead secret. Millicent’s feelings towards both him and Anne verged on something like hatred, though this primeval instinct was so hidden beneath a mask of culture that no one, Anne least of all, perceived it.

Of General Carden Anne now saw a good deal. Having come once to her house he came again, and came frequently. And every time, by some subtle method of his own device, he contrived to mention a certain green-covered book, and also to speak of the author. And, queerly enough, Anne responded. Perhaps by some feminine intuition she guessed General Carden’s secret, namely, that he had a pretty shrewd inkling of the identity of the author, and perhaps underneath the courtly worldly demeanour of the old man she saw the heart which longed for some word, some sign, from him. And perhaps knowing this, seeing this, the heart of the now liberated Anne went out to the old General, having in a way a common cause of unhappiness. And so the two smiled and chatted, and skimmed the surface of their sorrow, finding in so doing a curious consolation, so queer and unaccountable is human nature.

And then one day, a few weeks after her conversation with Muriel, she became conscious of a tiny hope in her heart. She could no more say at which precise moment it had first been born than one can say at which precise moment the tiny green leaves of a spring flower first push above the brown earth. For weeks there is nothing to be seen, and then one morning we come down to our garden and the tiny shoot is there in the sunshine, smiling shyly at us.

And so one morning, all unsuspected in its hidden growth, a tiny green shoot of hope sprang up in Anne’s heart, a hope that after all her pride had not been abased as she had feared, but that somewhere, somehow, love was lifting it from the earth. It is not easy to put into exact words precisely what she hoped, but assuredly trust had been renewed. And with an old priest praying at an altar, and a woman kneeling to St. Joseph, and somewhere, far away, a man’s heart worshipping and adoring, it is hardly surprising that it was so.

CHAPTER XXIV

DEMOCRITUS

And now if this history be inclined to jump from one place to another in a somewhat inconsequent fashion, perhaps it will be forgiven, for with its hero wandering away by himself and the rest of the characters more or less congregated together, it takes some mental skipping to record their story.

Yet Peter was now not entirely lonely. He had picked up a chum, a pal, in the shape of a small and extremely mongrel puppy of a breed unknown, but it is to be supposed that wire-haired terrier predominated. And here is the manner of their first meeting.

When Peter left the cottage in the early morning he walked first to the market-town, where he posted two letters—one to the Lady Anne Garland and one to his publishers, telling them that at present he had no settled address, but that if he wished to correspond with them later he would let them know. The consequence of this being that when a certain blue letter, addressed to him, arrived at their office it remained there, while they waited with what patience they might for word or sign from Peter. If he were a bit of a genius, and they were inclined to consider him so, his methods were also somewhat erratic.

Leaving the town, he turned his steps northward, and for no particular reason beyond the fact that he liked the look of the road. But perhaps it was really a certain unseen guidance which led his steps in that direction and made him of benefit to a small bundle of life embodied in a miserable little roll of dirty white hair, a stump of a baby tail, two short ears, four lanky little legs, a wet black nose, and a pair of really beautiful brown eyes. Often we see these beautiful eyes in an otherwise entirely ugly face. Perhaps it is not surprising, for after all they are the windows of the soul, and even a little doggy soul may be beautiful. But to proceed.

Peter walked along a dusty high-road till about noonday. It was an August day, as may be remembered, and breathless with the quiet heat of that month when it happens to be really hot. Peter had not noticed the heat at first; external matters were at the moment outside his consideration. He had been tramping doggedly, mentally weary, the sun of the last few weeks blotted out, his horizon now veiled in grey clouds of dreariness.

And then at last his body began to protest. “If you will indulge in lovesick thoughts,” it cried, “if your soul intends to give itself up to heartache and mental torment, at all events don’t drag me into it. And it’s very sure that if you will treat me with a bit more consideration you will be befriending your soul likewise.” And Peter, seeing the force of the argument, laughed.

It was against all philosophy except that of the monks of old time to punish your body because your soul was sick. Body and soul were—at all events in his case, he argued—too closely allied. Perhaps those old monks who had found a key to spiritual things—a key on which Peter did not pretend to have laid a hand—might have had such a way of separating the two that the one did not suffer for the infirmities of the other. But Peter was one of us ordinary mortals to whom prayer and such-like on an empty stomach—or an over-full one for that matter—would be a thing impossible. For his soul to be at ease his body must be comfortable, and most assuredly he was at the present moment increasing the discomfort of his soul by unduly fatiguing his body. It was an illogical proceeding, as he suddenly perceived.

A wood lay to the right of the road—a place of cool shadows and small dancing spots of gold, a silent place, still as the peace of some old cathedral.

Peter turned into it. He walked a little way across the green moss, till the leafy barrier of branches shut the high-road from his sight, and then sat down, his back against the purple and silver flecked trunk of a beech-tree. He unstrapped his wallet and laid it on the ground beside him. Then suddenly his ear caught a sound, a faint yelping cry of pain. It was as if some creature had for hours been imploring aid which did not come, as if it had sunk into a despairing silence, and then some tiny sound, some movement, had again awakened hope sufficient to make one last appeal.

Peter jumped to his feet.

“Now which way was it?” he queried. “From over there, if I’m not mistaken.” And he set off farther into the wood. “It’s an animal in a trap,” he said, “a beastly trap. Curse the things!”

Many a time in his wanderings Peter had put a dumb creature out of its misery. And if you have ever heard a hare cry, and seen its soft eyes gazing at you till you’d vow it was an imprisoned human soul looking through its windows, you’d know the fury of rage against some of mankind that had possessed Peter more than once, and which possessed him now. He peered right and left among the undergrowth, his eyes and ears alert, yet seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

He stopped and whistled softly.

“Where are you, you poor little atom of life?” he cried.

And then, not a yard ahead of him, from a great bramble clump, came the tiniest, most pitiful cry, but with a little note of hope in it.

“Oh!” cried Peter, and the next instant he was on his knees, the steel jaws were pulled asunder, and a baby mongrel of a puppy was dragging itself feebly towards him, trying to lick his hand. “Oh, you poor little beggar!” said Peter, as he wrenched the trap from the ground and flung it into the middle of the bramble-bush. Then he lifted the small bundle of rough, dirty white hair tenderly and carried it back to the beech-tree.

There he sat himself down and began to examine the wounded leg; it was terribly torn but mercifully not broken. Peter washed the wound with some water from his flask, and bound the leg with some strips he tore from his handkerchief, the small creature ecstatically licking his hand the while.

“You know,” remonstrated Peter, “a thing of your size should not be wandering about alone. It’s not correct. You might have known you’d get into difficulties.”

The puppy paused in its licking to look into his face with brown speaking eyes. They might have told Peter a good deal—a sad little story of being hunted, hounded from place to place on account of his ugly little body, of a last frantic, terrified rush from a distant village, of presently trotting along a dusty road, of a turning into a wood which smelled pleasantly of rabbits and other things dear to a doggy nose, and of a final excruciating imprisonment, which had lasted through Heaven knows how long of torment, till a big human being in the shape of Peter had come to his rescue. All this those eyes might have said. At all events, Peter read a bit of the story.

“I suppose, you poor atom,” he said whimsically, “that no one wanted you, so you set out to forage on your own account. Well, we’re both in the same boat. Shall we pull it together?”

It is not to be supposed that the puppy understood the precise words, but it unquestionably understood the tone, and it again fell to licking Peter’s hand.

Peter ferreted in his wallet. He found bread and meat, and together they shared a meal. Water Peter poured into his palm, and the small creature lapped greedily. Finally it curled itself up beside him, and, despite a sore and wounded leg, dropped into a blissful and contented slumber. After a moment or so Peter followed its example. He had not, it will be guessed, slept the previous night, and he had been tramping since daybreak. So now here were two wayfarers forgetting their woes in slumber, though the puppy, it may be safely averred, was confident that his woes were over.

The sun was slanting low through the wood when Peter awakened. He opened his eyes and looked around without moving. The puppy—the laziness of it!—had not stirred. But, then, who knows how many hours of puppy sleepiness it had not to make up.

“Ouf!” said Peter, stretching himself hugely.

The puppy woke, started, cringed, felt the wound in its leg, and yelped.

Peter picked it up with firm hands. “Now look here,” he said solemnly, “we don’t want any more fear. You’ve got to forget that. Do you understand? We’re going to be comrades, pals, you and I; and we’re both of us going to keep up brave hearts and cheer each other. You’ve got a wound in your leg, and I’ve got one in the region which I suppose is called the heart. You—you puppy thing! have the advantage over me, because with a bit of luck yours will mend in a few days. But anyhow, neither of us is going to whine. You’re going to bark cheerfully and wag your tail, and I’m going to write—presently, and grin as well as I know how. The world would be quite a decent place if people would let it be so, and we’re not going to add dulness to its poor old shoulders. It’s borne quite enough in its time. Have you understood?”

A small red tongue trying to reach Peter’s face testified to entire comprehension.

“Very well, then. Now come along, and as I presume you’d prefer not to walk on three legs I’ll carry you. You’re not much of a size, and only skin and bone at that.”

Peter picked up his wallet and hitched his bundle to his back, which bundle was heavier than when we first met him. It now contained, further, a packet of manuscript, a writing-tablet, and—the foolishness of the vagabond!—a dress suit. The bundle adjusted to exactly that position which made its weight of the least concern, he tucked the small animal under his arm, with careful consideration for its wounded leg, and set off to the edge of the wood and once more down the dusty road. With some shrewdness, at the first two villages he passed, he hid the puppy under his coat with a whispered injunction to lie still, an injunction which was scrupulously observed. Only by the tiniest quivering of the body and the quick beat of the heart against Peter’s arm was the smallest sign of movement and life betrayed. Villages, you perceive, were anathema to him, holding terror, pain, and everything that was most unholy and unpleasant.

They slept in a barn that night. Before he slept Peter took out and examined his manuscript by the light of a candle. Then his face quivered.

“Not to-night,” he said. “I can’t. I will to-morrow.”

He promised it like a child who cries “Honest Injun!” at the end of its speech.

“What would you do,” asked Peter, addressing himself to the puppy, “if you felt uncommonly miserable and had made a promise to yourself and a puppy to be cheerful?”

The puppy looked at him, head on one side. Then it yawned, a large wide yawn that began and ended in something remarkably like a grin. Finally it crept to Peter and curled down beside him in slumber.

“Grin and bear it and sleep, I suppose,” said Peter. “Puppy, you’re a philosopher, and I think your name is Democritus.”

CHAPTER XXV

AT A FAIR

And so these two entered into partnership—a partnership that, on the side of Democritus, was marked by an entire adoration, the full and overwhelming love and trust of a dog’s soul, and on Peter’s by affection and a real sense of comfort in the small animal’s companionship.

The days that passed were days of unbroken sunshine; England was revelling, as she rarely does, in long-continued sun and warmth. Peter spent the mornings and a good part of the afternoon in the shade of some coppice or in the shadow of some old quarry or haystack, engrossed in his writing, while Democritus at first lay curled beside him, and later, as the ugly wound healed, set off on rabbiting expeditions of his own, to return at noon and share Peter’s midday meal.

After having worked for some weeks under a roof, Peter at first did not find it so easy to write in the open. There were countless things to prove of distraction—the sunlight spots that danced on the ground beside him, the glint of a dragon-fly’s wing, the butterflies that flitted in the sunshine, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cows, the cry of the curlew, the plaintive pipe of the plover, all served to carry his thoughts into dreamy realms of fancy away from the work of the moment.

And in these realms there were three or four pictures that kept recurring to his mind. There was a woman sitting in the sunshine on a terrace, her hair warm and lustrous in the light. Peter would see again the indescribable note of race and breeding that predominated in her; see her eyes grey and shining; the warm ivory of her skin; her white hands long-fingered and slender, rose-tipped, with almond-shaped nails; the lines of her graceful figure; the whole fragrance, the warm vitality of her; and hear her low, round voice. There was a moonlight picture, elusive, full of a rare charm. There was a picture half-hidden in driving rain, and then a woman by his hearth, lifting a glass of red wine to her lips. And, lastly, a picture of a woman, looking at him, white, silent, her eyes holding depths of contempt.

And here Peter would catch his underlip with his teeth and turn again fiercely to his writing. It was gay writing, witty writing. His Wanderer wore his cap and bells finely, jesting right royally, and it would have needed a penetrating insight to recognize the sigh beneath the smile.

The world, as Peter had told Democritus, has borne much in her time. Through countless ages she has seen the sin, the sorrow, the pain of mankind; but she knows, if they could but realize it, that all this is as transitory as the barren days of winter that cover her, and that life and hope are never dead, but only sleeping, and will awake again with the spring. She tells us this times out of number. Every year she silently speaks her allegory, but it falls for the most part on unheeding ears. In the barren winter of our lives it is not easy to believe that spring will once more wake for us, that however long and dreary the grey months, somewhere and at some time the spring will dawn. Peter was facing his winter bravely, but he could not yet believe that one day the sun would shine again for him, the birds sing, the flowers bloom. For all his outward gaiety, the present physical warmth and sunshine only served to emphasize his mental winter. But Nature knew and did her best to cheer him, and to tell him that our interior spring and summer, though their advent is sure, do not always accord with hers.

One day, somewhere about the middle of September, Peter reached a small town. He was progressing slowly northward, but as he spent a considerable part of his time in writing his progress was by no means hurried.

In this town a fair was in full swing, and Peter was reminded of a letter he had once received, which talked of another fair—one in the South of England.

It was a gay scene enough, and Peter, with Democritus, at his heels, paused a while to watch it. There were crowds of people in holiday attire; there were endless couples—girl and swain. There were coco-nut shies; there were merry-go-rounds of horses and boat-cars, which revolved to some excruciating music (so-called), set in motion by the machinery which worked the highly coloured wooden horses and cars. There were stalls covered with miscellaneous articles of marvellous manufacture—glass vases with undulated edges, beginning white at the base and slowly increasing in colour from pale pink to a violent ruby; china mugs and cups covered with floreate designs or flags, between two of which King George and Queen Mary stared forth with painted pained surprise. There were gilt clocks, boxes of sweets, tin butter-dishes politely called silver, and all the rest of the articles which usually adorn the stalls at a fair.

A number of these articles were displayed on a circular table covered with red twill and surrounded by a barricade, beside which stood a man with a number of small hoops in his hand. In a loud voice he was urging the onlookers to try their luck. The hoops, it appeared, were to be loaned to them at the rate of three a penny; they were then to be flung quoit-like over any article on the table. Provided they fell surrounding the article without touching it, it became the property of the thrower. If you had ill-luck you had disbursed your money with no result; moderate luck would bring you a packet of sweets or a china dog or cat, and by surprising good luck you might become the possessor of a certain largish gilt clock or a ruby vase, and all for a sum which might be the fraction of a penny. It sounded seductive, and the throwers of the hoops were fairly numerous, though the acquirers of prizes were few. The wooden hoop had an unpleasant way of falling against the article required and propping itself up by it as though too tired for further exertion. But the throwers, with the hearts of born gamblers, continued to throw and hope for better things, till diminishing coppers or entirely empty pockets sent them sadly away. Naturally there was an occasional piece of luck, which fired the assembly to fresh enthusiasm.

Peter stood still to watch, amused by the wild vagaries of the wooden hoops. Suddenly a small voice at his elbow spoke.

“It ain’t easy, is it? I’ve thrown a shilling on that there table and not got so much as a penny packet o’ sweets. It’s dis’eartening!”

Peter looked round. At his elbow was a small and ugly girl, possibly the ugliest girl on which it had ever been his fortune to set eyes. Her pale, square face was covered with freckles, her eyes, small and green, were like little slits, her nose—a mere apology for that feature—was a dab in the middle of her face, her mouth wide and formless.

“Apparently it is not easy,” said Peter politely. And then he removed his eyes from her face, fearing that his astonishment at her plainness might be perceived by her.

She sighed. “I wish I ’adn’t thrown my shilling on that there table. It’s the third year now as I’ve made a fool of myself, and not a penny left for the ’orses nor nothin’. ’Tisn’t as if I were one o’ the girls wot folks treat. ’Oo could, with a face like mine?”

There was no complaint in the remark. It was not even a hint to Peter; it was merely the grave statement of a fact, with the explanation of the reason for it.

“Why,” asked Peter solemnly, “did you throw your money on that table?”

She came a trifle nearer to him, and spoke in a whisper.

“It’s them two things,” she said. “That there vase—the crimson one with the white snake a-curling round it, and the gold clock. I’ve watched ’em now for three years, and me ’eart’s in me mouth lest some one should get the ’oops over. I can’t get away from ’ere, nor enjoy the fair no ’ow for watchin’, so the ’orses and boats wouldn’t be much good even if I ’adn’t throwed that shilling away.” It was poured forth in a rapid undertone, as if the mere mention of her longing might lead a hoop to encircle either of the two coveted treasures.

Peter eyed them gravely. Of course they were unutterably hideous, that went without saying; but there they were, representing the goal—unattainable—of three years’ ambition.

“I wonder—” said Peter, and stopped. He had once had some skill as a player of quoits. He drew a copper from his pocket. “I’ll have three of those hoops,” he said to the man in charge of the stall.

The Ugly Little Girl watched him, anxiety in her eyes. Democritus, at his master’s heels, was regarding the proceedings unperturbed.

Peter flung one hoop; it fell on the table and rested in its usual melancholy fashion against a china figure. The Ugly Little Girl heaved a sigh of relief; she felt that her confidence had been misplaced.

Peter threw again. The hoop fell fairly over the gilt clock.

“Good!” said the owner of the stall, with an attempt at cheerfulness. And he picked up the hoop, handing Peter the clock.

Amazed, wrathful, fighting with her tears, the Ugly Little Girl watched Peter. He threw a third time. The ruby vase with the white snake climbing up it was neatly encircled. The man handed it to Peter in a melancholy fashion.

“More ’oops?” he asked dejectedly.

“Not at the moment,” returned Peter jauntily, and he moved away. The Ugly Little Girl was no longer at his elbow.

Peter worked his way through the group of envious admirers round the stall, and at a little distance he saw her. He walked in her direction, Democritus at his heels.

“Permit me,” quoth Peter as he approached.

She turned round; her eyes were full of tears, her mouth distorted in a grimace of woe.

“Now, by all the gods,” exclaimed Peter, amazed, “what’s the matter with the child?”

“Might ’ave known you’d ’ave got them. Might ’ave known the luck was all agin me.”

“Ye gods and little fishes!” cried Peter, raising his eyes to the sky. “And how was I to know you wanted the honour of throwing the blessed little wooden hoops yourself? I fancied it was the mere possession of the gorgeous articles that you coveted.”

“What d’you mean?” she queried.

“I acquired these treasures,” returned Peter, “with the sole intention of presenting them to you. If, however, I have been mistaken——”

“For me!” It had never dawned upon her that any one would willingly part with such treasures, once acquired.

“Of course,” said Peter patiently, “for you. May I ask what else you imagined I was going to do with them?” He held the gilt clock and the ruby vase towards her.

Her ugly face was all a-quiver with rapture. “Oh!” she breathed, and she looked at Peter with adoring eyes.

“Here, take them!” laughed Peter.

She took them tenderly, still half-unbelieving in her good fortune.

“I never thought,” she whispered, “that no one would ’ave thrown ’oops for me. Oh, I say!”

Peter looked at her, and then some spirit took possession of him. Perhaps it was one of enterprise, perhaps it was one of mischief, perhaps it was one of kindliness, or perhaps—and this is more probable—it was a mixture of all three.

“Shall we do the fair together?” he asked.

It was her turn now to look at him. Incredulity, joy, and something akin to tears struggled for the mastery. The last are apt to come to the surface at a kindness to one not used to it.

“I—I—d’you mean it?” she asked, ecstatic.

“With all the faith in the world,” replied Peter. “Come along.”

They were an odd trio—the tall, lean man in his shabby coat and trousers and the fantastic peacock feather in his hat, the small ugly girl in her tawdry finery, the mongrel puppy which trotted solemnly at Peter’s heels.

To the Ugly Little Girl it was a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon. She had a man all of her own, and one, too, who flung shillings abroad with never so much as a hint at his reckless expenditure. Never again was she to care for the pitying looks cast upon her lonely self by the other girls who walked abroad with their swains. Never again was she lonely. Her life was to hold a dream-knight, a man with sad eyes and a whimsical smile, who had fêted her throughout one glorious September day. And her dream was infinitely more beautiful than any other girl’s reality, for in it her man was ever courtly, ever considerate, laughing, gay, with odd little speeches that somehow tugged at her heart-strings and brought the happy tears to her eyes. There was never a blow, never a harsh word, such as fell too often to the lot of the others. Thrice happy Ugly Little Girl, with her one day of innocent joy and her dream throughout her life!

As for Peter, having undertaken the rôle of swain, you may be sure he played his part royally. He whirled on wooden horses till his brain was dizzy, while Democritus, from the safety of the solid earth, watched his antics in dumb amazement, marvelling at his undignified proceedings. He bought and ate waffles made by a stout woman with a motherly face, who blessed the two in a way that caused the Ugly Little Girl to blush scarlet and convulsed Peter with inward laughter; he bought sticks of sugar-candy and huge peppermints called “humbugs”; and finally he watched a hunchbacked harlequin, in green and gold spangles, turn somersaults and jest for the motley herd around him.

The Ugly Little Girl gazed in awestruck wonder, laughing every now and then in a spasm of merriment. Suddenly she looked up and saw Peter’s face.

“Don’t it make you laugh?” she queried. “Ain’t it funny?”

“For the crowd, perhaps,” answered Peter. “But for the harlequin—” He shrugged his shoulders, and the Ugly Little Girl somehow understood and ceased to smile.

Later they saw him outside a tent; he was jesting no longer. Morose, silent, he was gazing on the ground. Peter said a word or two, insignificant but friendly.

“Ah!” said the fellow, looking up; “you can see the man beneath the fool.”

“Many of us wear the cap and bells,” said Peter. “It’s better to raise a laugh than be an object of pity to a non-understanding multitude.”

“You, too!” said the man. “Another in the world with a laugh on his lips and an ache at his heart!”

“Sighing won’t ease the ache,” said Peter; “and a laugh is often more dignified than a groan.”

“You’re right there,” was the answer. “And a laughing fool is better than a moping wise man.”

“Well said!” quoth Peter. And then there was a call from within the tent, and the harlequin vanished with a nod.

“I understand,” said the Ugly Little Girl slowly. “It ain’t nice to be laughed at because you ’ave an ugly body, but it’s better to let folk laugh at you and laugh with them than go around with a long face. It’s comfortin’ to think that God don’t take no account of your body. They say as ’ow ’E made it, but I’m thinking as it’s your father and mother ’as a good ’and in it, and it ain’t fair to lay all the blame on God.”

“Oh no,” said Peter airily but vaguely, and completely at a loss for a suitable reply. And then he bethought him of the coco-nut shies, and led the way in that direction.

“Ain’t you givin’ me a time!” said the Ugly Little Girl gleefully.

Much later, in the gathering dusk, there was dancing; and, as is the way with fairs, a certain roughness and rowdyism began to prevail. Peter had his own ideas as to the propriety of certain places for women, of whatever class.

“It is time you left,” he remarked coolly.

She glanced up, surprised.

“It is,” said Peter authoritatively, “too rough here now for a woman.”

She blushed with pleasure. The other swains would keep their girls there till Heaven knows what o’clock.

“Where do you live?” demanded Peter.

“In Watermill Street,” she replied, meek, delighted. And then, with a sudden burst of honesty, “I’m—I’m only a maid-of-all-work.”

“Jack-of-all-trades,” smiled Peter. “I’ll give myself the pleasure of escorting you to your door.”

They walked through the deserted streets. Every man abroad was at the fair. Democritus followed. It had been a day of perplexity to him.

The Ugly Little Girl was fumbling with one hand at her neck; in the other arm she held the precious clock and vase.

“What,” asked Peter politely, “is the trouble? Can I assist you?”

“’Ere, ’old them a minute, will you?” She thrust the clock and vase towards him. Peter took them. She fumbled now with both hands, and in a moment brought them away, holding in them a small medal, one of the Immaculate Conception. It was attached to a thick boot-lace.

Peter gazed at her.

“I ’aven’t nothin’ else worth ’avin’,” she said hurriedly. “Father Mordaunt ’e blessed it for me. I’d—I’d like you to take it.”

Peter looked from the medal and boot-lace to the ugly, imploring face.

“Oh, but—” he said, and he hesitated. It was obviously a great possession.

“Father Mordaunt ’e’d never mind,” she said earnestly; “and—and Our Lady’ll understand, seein’ as ’ow it’s the only thing I’ve got to give you, and you’ve made me so ’appy.” She still tendered it, wistful, anxious.

Peter took it, and dropped it, boot-lace and all, into his pocket.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, with no trace of whimsical nonsense now in his tone.

Then she took the clock and vase again from him, and they turned into Watermill Street. At a door she paused.

“I ain’t goin’ to try and say thank you,” she whispered, “because I can’t. I know you’re a real gentleman—not only by your speech, but by the way you’ve treated me so considerate and good. I’ll pray to Our Lady for you as long as ever I live, and ask ’Er to give you whatever you wants most. And I’ll begin this very night.”

“Oh,” smiled Peter, “you queer, dear little girl!” But though he smiled his eyes were a trifle misty. It had been, after all, a mere freak of fancy on his part to play the squire of dames to a small maid-of-all-work that afternoon. He felt himself to be a bit of a fraud, undeserving of this wealth of gratitude. He crushed the small work-worn fingers hard in his.

And so the two parted. It had been a trifling incident; but, after all, it is rather pleasant to think of, as somehow characteristic of Peter.

CHAPTER XXVI

ON THE CLOUD

It was about the third week in January that Peter reached a certain town named Congleton, and leaving it behind him, walked towards a mountain named the Cloud.

The weather was now inclement; cold winds blew, driving showers of sleet and rain assailed him, making the progress of the vagabond Peter far from pleasant.

Bundle on back, his hands deep in the pockets of a rough frieze overcoat he had purchased some three months previously, he tramped along the road, Democritus at his heels. It might well be wondered why Peter did not seek some lodging during these inclement months, and in answer there is nothing to say beyond the fact that a certain odd strain in him led him to continue his present mode of living. He preferred inclemency of weather, entire isolation, to life under a roof, with the chance of meeting his fellow-men. Perhaps it was strange, but after all had he not already spent more than two years on the roads, so may not the love of the open have taken possession of him? At all events it is not what he might have done, but what he actually did, with which this history has to deal.

Somewhere up on the top of the Cloud, with its back to a small wood of pines and with a strip of moorland and then the road in front of it, stands a small deserted hut. It is no more than a hovel of one tiny room, and perhaps at one time it was used as a shepherd’s shelter.

It was drawing on to the wintry dusk when Peter saw it in the gloom, lying to the left of him from the road. He crossed the strip of moorland and went towards it. He found it, as he had fancied he might, entirely empty. There was a hole in the roof through which the rain was driving and the broken door rattled on its hinges. It was very different from a cottage he had discovered some months previously, but it was at all events some kind of shelter, and the cold without was bitter.

“We’ll take possession,” said Peter to Democritus. “It cannot be styled a princely habitation—in fact, it’s uncommonly wretched. But I fancy it will be more desirable than the road to-night.”

He unfastened his bundle and set it on the earth floor. Outside the wind howled in fury; mist, rain, and gathering dusk blotted out the landscape beyond the road.

“Ugh!” said Peter with a shudder, “it’s remarkably unpleasant.”

He unpacked his bundle. There was half a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines, a bottle of water, a small flask of whisky, and a bone with some meat on it for Democritus.

They finished their meal together, and then Peter still sat with his back to the wall, as far away from the broken door as possible, watching the rain that fell through the hole in the roof. For nearly the first time since he had begun his wanderings he was physically wretched. Fate had for a short time lifted his mental loneliness from him, only to plunge him deeper into it. Mental loneliness, however, he had done his best to accept with what philosophy he might, but now physical loneliness, entire discomfort, and bodily depression were weighing hard upon him. He felt he had lost the grit to fight further. A quixotic action of long ago suddenly presented itself to him as an entirely idiotic proceeding on his part. Why on earth had he ruined his own life, cut himself off from communion with his fellow-men, for a mere romantic notion?

“I’m beaten,” said Peter to himself, “done! I fancied I was doing a fine thing. I thought myself, no doubt, a bit of a hero; and now I’m a coward, a turncoat, who’d give a very great deal to undo the past.”

He was wretched, entirely wretched, and even the soft warm tongue of Democritus against his hand was of no smallest comfort to him.

He looked at the bundle on the ground beside him. It contained his manuscript, fair, complete but for the title and signature and the dedication should he choose to give it one. It brought him no atom of pleasure; it appeared to him worthless, a thing of false sentiment, talking of high courage, of nobility of thought, which in reality vanished like a pricked air-bubble the moment the finger of fact was laid upon it.

How in the name of fortune had he kept his spirits buoyed up all these years? And why in Heaven’s name had the buoyancy suddenly deserted him? Peter turned about in his mind for a solution of the problem. Presently he found it. It came with something like a shock. He was older, that was the reason. Close on six years had rolled over his head since the day he had surrendered all for an extravagant notion. It is the young, Peter reflected sagely, who take their all and throw it with both hands on the altar of sacrifice. They do not realize—how should they in their youthful optimism?—what they are giving up. They have never known monotony, the grey years that roll by with nothing in heaven or earth to break their dulness.