them to Peter. The boy found the one in Stephen's handwriting.
“You may read it,” said Mr. Zanti smiling. Peter read it. He could not understand it and it was signed “John Simmons” . . . but it was certainly in Stephen's handwriting.
“Thank you,” said Peter in rather a quivering voice and he turned away, gulping down his disappointment.
Mr. Zanti patted him on the shoulder.
“That's right, my boy. All, I expect you miss your friend. You will be lonely here, yes? Well—see—now that you have been here a few days perhaps it is time for you to find a place to live—and I have talked wiz a friend of mine, a ver' good friend who 'as lived for many years in a 'ouse where 'e says there is a room that will just do for you—cheap, pleasant people . . . yes? To-morrow 'e will show you the place. There you will 'ave friends—”
Peter smiled, thanked Mr. Zanti and went to bed. But his dreams were confused that night. It seemed to him that London was a huge room with closing walls, and that ever they came closer and closer and that he screamed for Stephen and they would not let Stephen come to him.
And bells were ringing, and Mr. Zanti, with a lighted candle in his hands, was creeping down those dark stairs that led to the kitchen, and he might have stopped those closing walls but he would not. Then suddenly Peter was running down the Sea Road above Treliss and the waves were sounding furiously below him—his father was there waiting for him sternly, at the road's end and Herr Gottfried with a Homer in one hand and his blue shoes in the other was watching them out of his bright eyes. His father was waiting to kill him and Mrs. Pascoe was at his elbow. Peter screamed, the sweat was pouring off his forehead, his throat was tight with agony when suddenly by his side was old Frosted Moses, with his flowing beard. “It isn't life that matters,” he was whispering in his old cracked voice, “but the courage that you bring to it.”
The figures faded, the light grew broader and broader, and Peter woke to find Mr. Zanti, by the aid of a candle, climbing into bed.
But some time passed before he had courage to fall asleep again.
