‘You mean,’ I said, ’that if we had a great attack ready and had driven all the Boche planes back from our front, Lensch and his circus might get over in spite of us and blow the gaff?’

‘Yes,’ he said solemnly.  ’Or if we were attacked, and had a weak spot, Lensch might show the Germans where to get through.  I do not think we are going to attack for a long time; but I am pretty sure that Germany is going to fling every man against us.  That is the talk of my friends, and it is not bluff.’

* * * * *

That night I cooked our modest dinner, and we smoked our pipes with the stove door open and the good smell of woodsmoke in our nostrils.  I told him of all my doings and of the Wild Birds and Ivery and the job we were engaged on.  Blenkiron’s instructions were that we two should live humbly and keep our eyes and ears open, for we were outside suspicion—­the cantankerous lame Boer and his loutish servant from Arosa.  Somewhere in the place was a rendezvous of our 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.