r enemies, and
thither came Chelius on his dark errands.

Peter nodded his head sagely, 'I think I have guessed the place. The
daughter of the old woman used to pull my chair sometimes down to the
village, and I have sat in cheap inns and talked to servants. There is
a fresh-water pan there, it is all covered with snow now, and beside it
there is a big house that they call the Pink Chalet. I do not know much
about it, except that rich folk live in it, for I know the other houses
and they are harmless. Also the big hotels, which are too cold and
public for strangers to meet in.'

I put Peter to bed, and it was a joy to me to look after him, to give
him his tonic and prepare the hot water bottle that comforted his
neuralgia. His behaviour was like a docile child's, and he never lapsed
from his sunny temper, though I could see how his leg gave him hell.
They had tried massage for it and given it up, and there was nothing
for him but to endure till nature and his tough constitution deadened
the tortured nerves again. I shifted my bed out of the pantry and slept
in the room with him, and when I woke in the night, as one does the
first time in a strange place, I could tell by his breathing that he
was wakeful and suffering.

Next day a bath chair containing a grizzled cripple and pushed by a
limping peasant might have been seen descending the long hill to the
village. It was clear frosty weather which makes the cheeks tingle, and
I felt so full of beans that it was hard to remember my game leg. The
valley was shut in on the east by a great mass of rocks and glaciers,
belonging to a mountain whose top could not be seen. But on the south,
above the snowy fir-woods, there was a most delicate lace-like peak
with a point like a needle. I looked at it with interest, for beyond it
lay the valley which led to the Staub pass, and beyond that was
Italy--and Mary.

The old village of St Anton had one long, narrow street which bent at
right angles to a bridge which spanned the river flowing from the lake.
Thence the road climbed steeply, but at the other end of the street it
ran on the level by the water's edge, lined with gimcrack
boarding-houses, now shuttered to the world, and a few villas in
patches of garden. At the far end, just before it plunged into a
pine-wood, a promontory jutted into the lake, leaving a broad space
between the road and the water. Here were the grounds of a more
considerable dwelling--snow-covered laurels