“Bless my soul,” said Stephen, looking at him, “all these weeks I've been forgetting him. I've been in a kind of dream, boy--a kind o' dream. Why didn't I 'it 'im before? Lord, why didn't I 'it 'im before!” Peter at the word thought of his mother. “Yes,” he thought, with clenched teeth, “I'll go for them!” CHAPTER VIII PETER AND HIS MOTHER I He had returned over the heavy fields, singing to a round-faced moon. In the morning, when he woke after a night of glorious fantastic dreams, and saw the sun beating very brightly across his carpet and birds singing beyond his window, he felt still that same exultation. It seemed to him, as he sat on his bed, with the sun striking his face, that last night he had been brought into touch with a vigour that challenged all the mists and vapours by which he had felt himself surrounded. That was the way that now he would face them. Looking back afterwards, he was to see that that evening with Stephen flung him on to all the events that so rapidly followed. Moreover, above all the sensation of the evening there was also a triumphant recognition of the fact that Stephen had now been restored to him. He might never see him again, but they were friends once more, he could not be lonely now as he had been.... And then, coming out of the town into the dark street and the starlight, he thought that he recognised a square form walking before him. He puzzled his brain to recall the connection and then, as he passed Zachary Tan's shop, the figure turned in and showed, for a moment, his face. It was that strange man from London, Mr. Emilio Zanti.... II It seemed to Peter that now at Scaw House the sense of expectation that had been with them all during the last weeks was charged with suspense--at supper that night his aunt burst suddenly into tears and left the room. Shortly afterwards his father also, without a word, got up from the table and went upstairs.... Peter was left alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his grandfather before; it was, perhaps, because he had himself grown up all in a day. Last night had proved that one was grown up indeed, although one was but seventeen. But it proved to him still more that the time had come for him to deal with the situation all about him, to discover the thing that was occupying them all so deeply. Peter bent down to the cushions. “Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?” He could hear, faintly, beneath the rugs something about “hell” and “fire” and “poor old man.”