would never be
the same, but they would be forty-eight hours better.

Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading aloud to
him. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a valise for the
next day's journey and counted out into an envelope half of the money he
had with him. This he labeled "Household Expenses" and set it up on
his table, leaning against his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony
about. The salon was dark except for the study lamp turned down.

Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers
and wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the landing; Peter
carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy's stand
and wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine. Then,
finding it still only nine o'clock, he turned up the lamp in the salon
and wrote an exciting letter from Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb,
wandering on the mountain-side, had been picked up by an avalanche and
carried down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And because
he stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable that
before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd, and, of course,
because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's lips were none too
steady as he folded up the letter.

The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and closed
the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his way
through the room. It touched a little sweater coat of Harmony's, hanging
over the back of a chair. Peter picked it up in a very passion of
tenderness and held it to him.

"Little girl!" he choked. "My little girl! God help me!"

He was rather ashamed, considerably startled. It alarmed him to find
that the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could rouse such a
storm in him. It made him pause. He put down the coat and pulled himself
up sharply. McLean was right; he was only human stuff, very poor human
stuff. He put the little coat down hastily, only to lift it again gently
to his lips.

"Good-night, dear," he whispered. "Goodnight, Harmony."

Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and
supper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither rooms nor
pension. They came to make inquiries.

The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge of
the bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still lacked an
occupant.

Mrs. Boyer had no