little cousin across the mountains'. Once I was bidden
expect a friend of the patron's, the wise doctor of whom he had often
spoken, but though after that I shadowed the Pink Chalet for two days
no doctor appeared.

My investigations were a barren business. I used to go down to the
village in the afternoon and sit in an out-of-the-way cafe, talking
slow German with peasants and hotel porters, but there was little to
learn. I knew all there was to hear about the Pink Chalet, and that was
nothing. A young man who ski-ed stayed for three nights and spent his
days on the alps above the fir-woods. A party of four, including two
women, was reported to have been there for a night--all ramifications
of the rich family of Basle. I studied the house from the lake, which
should have been nicely swept into ice-rinks, but from lack of visitors
was a heap of blown snow. The high old walls of the back part were
built straight from the water's edge. I remember I tried a short cut
through the grounds to the high-road and was given 'Good afternoon' by
a smiling German manservant. One way and another I gathered there were
a good many serving-men about the place--too many for the infrequent
guests. But beyond this I discovered nothing.

Not that I was bored, for I had always Peter to turn to. He was
thinking a lot about South Africa, and the thing he liked best was to
go over with me every detail of our old expeditions. They belonged to a
life which he could think about without pain, whereas the war was too
near and bitter for him. He liked to hobble out-of-doors after the
darkness came and look at his old friends, the stars. He called them by
the words they use on the veld, and the first star of morning he called
the _voorlooper_--the little boy who inspans the oxen--a name I had not
heard for twenty years. Many a great yarn we spun in the long evenings,
but I always went to bed with a sore heart. The longing in his eyes was
too urgent, longing not for old days or far countries, but for the
health and strength which had once been his pride.

One night I told him about Mary.

'She will be a happy _mysie_,' he said, 'but you will need to be very
clever with her, for women are queer cattle and you and I don't know
their ways. They tell me English women do not cook and make clothes
like our vrouws, so what will she find to do? I doubt an idle woman
will be like a mealie-fed horse.'

It was no good explaining to him the kind of girl Mary