“The letter at last!” she said.  “Shall I read it or will you?”

“You read it.  It takes me so long.  I’ll read it all day, after you are gone.  I always do.”

Anna Gates read the letter.  She read aloud poor Peter’s first halting lines, when he was struggling against sleep and cold.  They were mainly an apology for the delay.  Then forgetting discomfort in the joy of creation, he became more comfortable.  The account of the near-accident was wonderfully graphic; the description of the chamois was fervid, if not accurate.  But consternation came with the end.

The letter apparently finished, there was yet another sheet.  The doctor read on.

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Peter’s frantic postscript, “find out how much a medium-sized chamois—­”

Dr. Gates stopped “—­ought to weigh,” was the rest of it, “and fix it right in the letter.  The kid’s too smart to be fooled and I never saw a chamois outside of a drug store.  They have horns, haven’t they?”

“That’s funny!” said Jimmy Conway.

“That was one of my papers slipped in by mistake,” remarked Dr. Gates, with dignity, and flashing a wild appeal for help to Harmony.

“How did one of your papers get in when it was sealed?”

“I think,” observed Harmony, leaning forward, “that little boys must not ask too many questions, especially when Christmas is only six weeks off.”

“I know!  He wants to send me the horns the way he sent me the boar’s tusks.”

For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of a boar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna for a pair of tusks.  The tusks had not been so difficult.  But horns!

Jimmy was contented with his solution and asked no more questions.  The morning’s excitement had tired him, and he lay back.  Dr. Gates went to hold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, looking grave.

The boy was asleep, holding the letter in his thin hands.

The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmony—­to find some one worse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to do something, however small, for some one else.  Her own troubles looked very small to her that day as she left the hospital and stepped out into the bright sunshine.

She passed the impassive sentry, then turned and went back to him.

“Do you wish to do a very kind thing?” she asked in German.

Now the conversation of an Austrian sentry consists of yea, yea, and nay, nay, and not always that.  But Harmony was lovely and the sun was moderating the wind.  The sentry looked round; no one was near.

“What do you wish?”

“Inside that third window is a small boy and he is very ill.  I do not think—­perhaps he will never be well again.  Could you not, now and then, pass the window?  It pleases him.”

“Pass the window!  But why?”

“In America we see few of our soldiers.  He likes to see you and the gun.”