Once, when I said something about his patience, he said he had got to try to live up to Mr Standfast.  He had fixed on that character to follow, though he would have preferred Mr Valiant-for-Truth if he had thought himself good enough.  He used to talk about Mr Standfast in his queer way as if he were a friend of us both, like Blenkiron . . .  I tell you I was humbled out of all my pride by the sight of Peter, so uncomplaining and gentle and wise.  The Almighty Himself couldn’t have made a prig out of him, and he never would have thought of preaching.  Only once did he give me advice.  I had always a liking for short cuts, and I was getting a bit restive under the long inaction.  One day when I expressed my feelings on the matter, Peter upped and read from the Pilgrim’s Progress:  ’Some also have wished that the next way to their Father’s house were here, that they might be troubled no more with either hills or mountains to go over, but the Way is the Way, and there is an end.’

All the same when we got into March and nothing happened I grew pretty anxious.  Blenkiron had said we were fighting against time, and here were the weeks slipping away.  His letters came occasionally, always in the shape of communications from my aunt.  One told me that I would soon be out of a job, for Peter’s repatriation was just about through, and he might get his movement order any day.  Another spoke of my little cousin over the hills, and said that she hoped soon to be going to a place called Santa Chiara in the Val Saluzzana.  I got out the map in a hurry and measured the distance from there to St Anton and pored over the two roads thither—­the short one by the Staub Pass and the long one by the Marjolana.  These letters made me think that things were nearing a climax, but still no instructions came.  I had nothing to report in my own messages, I had discovered nothing in the Pink Chalet but idle servants, I was not even sure if the Pink Chalet were not a harmless villa, and I hadn’t come within a thousand miles of finding Chelius.  All my desire to imitate Peter’s stoicism didn’t prevent me from getting occasionally rattled and despondent.

The one thing I could do was to keep fit, for I had a notion I might soon want all my bodily strength.  I had to keep up my pretence of lameness in the daytime, so I used to take my exercise at night.  I would sleep in the afternoon, when Peter had his siesta, and then about ten in the evening, after putting him to bed, I would slip out-of-doors and go for a four or five hours’ tramp.  Wonderful were those midnight wanderings.  I pushed up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet and above me a host of glittering stars.  Once on a night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley head, scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered fearfully into the spectral crevasses.  At such hours I had the