It's a good bit more than time
for a letter."
"Great Scott!"
"Both yesterday and to-day he asked for it and to-day he fretted
a little. The nurse found him crying."
"The poor little devil!" said Peter contritely. "Overdue, is it?
I'll fix it to-night."
"Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm
off at seven."
"The envelope?"
"Here it is. And take my candle. I'm going to bed."
That was at midnight or shortly after. Half after one struck from
the twin clocks of the Votivkirche and echoed from the
Stephansplatz across the city. It found Peter with the window
closed, sitting up in bed, a candle balanced on one knee, a
writing-tablet on the other.
He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt in which he
had taken part that day, including a detailed description of the
quarry, which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty
pounds, Peter being strong on imagination and short on facts as
regards the Alpine chamois. Then, trying to read the letter from
a small boy's point of view and deciding that it lacked snap, he
added by way of postscript a harrowing incident of avalanche,
rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in a sort of glow of
authorship, and after some thought took fifty pounds off the
chamois.
The letter finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed
to Jimmy Conroy--an envelope that stamped the whole episode as
authentic, bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the
postmark of a tiny village in the Austrian Tyrol.
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