Fortitude

rful person, and sometimes those Heroes knew of it and lived up to his worshipping and sometimes they knew

uld not have been Peter without it; very often these Heroes, poor things, came tumbling from their pedestals, often they came, in very s

old mother, one enemy, and very many friends; he had loved a girl, and she had been engaged to him for two years, but another man had taken her away and married her-and that is why he had an enemy. He greeted his friends and kissed poor Jane Clewer under the mistletoe, and then kissed old Mother Figgis, who pushed him away with a laugh and "Coom up there-where are yer at?"-and Peter watched him until his turn also shou

came-Stephen turn

co-smoke like a rat through a hole in the wall) had struck up a tune on a fiddle. Peter was glad, because no one watched them together. He liked to meet Stephen in private. He bu

noisiest, and he could feel the hard outline of Stephen's enormous silver watch that his family had had, so Stephen said, for a hundred years. Now was the blissful time, the perfect moment. The rest of the world was busied with life-the window showed the dull and then suddenly shining flakes of snow, the lights and the limitless sea-the room showed the sanded floor

the end of his beard tickles Peter's neck, "w

ck to be beat

rhaps yer won't b

m staying ... like

d that he was thinking of something. He knew, although he could not see, that Stephen's eyes were staring right across the

hat he was often very sad, and that moods came upon him when he could do nothing but think and watch and wait-and then his face grew v

ves and eddies, in and out, blown by the breeze-dark and heavy outside against the clouded sky, white and delicate and swiftly vanishing in the room. Dicky the Fool came across the floor and talked to Stephen in his smiling, rambling way. People pitied Dicky and shook their heads when his name was me

tars that he had seen rolling down the Grey Hill, and behold, when they got to the bottom-"little bright nickety things, like new saxpennies-it was suddenly so dark that

loor and rubbing their hands together-the fiddle was playing more madly than ever-and at every moment some couple would stop under the mistletoe

best be going now, Peter, lad. 'Tis half-past nine and, c

ck: "Not yet, Stephen-

ng with his eyes wide open, staring at the window. He saw the window with its dark frame, and he saw the snow .. and then, in an instant, the room, the people, the music, the tramping of feet, the roar of voices, these things were all swept away, and instead there was absolute stillness, only the noise that a little wind makes when it rustles through the blades of grass, and above him rose the Grey Hill with its funny sugar-loaf top and against it heavy black clouds were driving-outlined sharply against the sky was the straight stone

he whispere

he eyes of a wild animal, at the door. A man, a short, square man with a muffler round his throat, a

ome, Peter boy," and he kissed him very softly

the door. Then he walked across the room, brushing the people as

," he said, "goo