mois.

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.

It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled himself to
sleep.

It was just two o'clock when the night nurse, making rounds in her
ward in the general hospital, found a small boy very much awake on his
pillow, and taking off her felt slipper shook it at him in pretended
fury.

"Now, thou bad one!" she said. "Awake, when the Herr Doktor orders
sleep! Shall I use the slipper?"

The boy replied in German with a strong English accent.

"I cannot sleep. Yesterday the Fraulein Elisabet said that in the
mountains there are accidents, and that sometimes--"

"The Fraulein Elisabet is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter of a
certainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. Thy father has
perhaps captured a great boar, or a--a chamois, and he writes of it."

"Do chamois have horns?"

"Ja. Great horns--so."

"He will send them to me! And there are no accidents?"

"None. Now sleep, or--the slipper."

CHAPTER VIII

So far Harmony's small world in the old city had consisted of Scatchy
and the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off in the
firmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had gone, weeping
anxious postcards from every way station it is true, but nevertheless
gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the master as long as her funds
held out. To them now she was about to add Jimmy.

The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of pink
flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and complete
even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. It
was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it to
Harmony the next morning.

"He hasn't been so well the last day or two," she said. "He doesn't
sleep much--that's the worst of those heart conditions. Sometimes, while
I've been working on this thing, I've wondered--Well, we're making a
fight anyhow. And better take the letter, too, Harry. I might forget and
make lecture notes on it, and if I spoil that envelope--"

Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital, meeting the
doctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's little story quite
well. Anna Gates had told it to her in detail.

"Just one