“But you must have a little sleep, Peter.”

“No.  I’ll stay until—­Go back to bed.  It is very early.”

Peter had not been able after all to secure the Nurse Elisabet, and now it was useless.  At eight o’clock he let Marie take his place, then he bathed and dressed and prepared to face another day, perhaps another night.  For the child’s release came slowly.  He tried to eat breakfast, but managed only a cup of coffee.

Many things had come to Peter in the long night, and one was insistent—­the boy’s mother was in Vienna and he was dying without her.  Peter might know in his heart that he had done the best thing for the child, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accuse him.  He had separated mother and child.  Who was he to have decided the mother’s unfitness, to have played destiny?  How lightly he had taken the lives of others in his hand, and to what end?  Harmony, God knows where; the boy dying without his mother.  Whatever that mother might be, her place that day was with her boy.  What a wreck he had made of things!  He was humbled as well as stricken, poor Peter!

In the morning he sent a note to McLean, asking him to try to trace the mother and inclosing the music-hall clipping and the letter.  The letter, signed only “Mamma,” was not helpful.  The clipping might prove valuable.

“And for Heaven’s sake be quick,” wrote Peter.  “This is a matter of hours.  I meant well, but I’ve done a terrible thing.  Bring her, Mac, no matter what she is or where you find her.”  The Portier carried the note.  When he came up to get it he brought in his pocket a small rabbit and a lettuce leaf.  Never before had the combination failed to arouse and amuse the boy.  He carried the rabbit down again sorrowfully.  “He saw it not,” he reported sadly to his wife.  “Be off to the church while I deliver this letter.  And this rabbit we will not cook, but keep in remembrance.”

At eleven o’clock Marie called Peter, who was asleep on the horsehair sofa.

“He asks for you.”

Peter was instantly awake and on his feet.  The boy’s eyes were open and fixed on him.

“Is it another day?” he asked.

“Yes, boy; another morning.”

“I am cold, Peter.”

They blanketed him, although the room was warm.  From where he lay he could see the mice.  He watched them for a moment.  Poor Peter, very humble, found himself wondering in how many ways he had been remiss.  To see this small soul launched into eternity without a foreword, without a bit of light for the journey!  Peter’s religion had been one of life and living, not of creed.

Marie, bringing jugs of hot water, bent over Peter.

“He knows, poor little one!” she whispered.

And so, indeed, it would seem.  The boy, revived by a spoonful or two of broth, asked to have the two tame mice on the bed.  Peter, opening the cage, found one dead, very stiff and stark.  The catastrophe he kept from the boy.