 thought I
        should never write to you again; I got malarial fever, and lay
        desperately ill at the Ospedale Internazionale at Naples. It came of
        some monstrous follies there's no need to speak of. A new and valuable
        experience. I know what it is to look steadily into the eyes of Death.
            Even now, I am far from well. This keeps me in low spirits. The
        other day I was half decided to start for London. I am miserably alone,
        want to see a friend. What a glorious place Staple Inn seemed to me as I
        lay in the hospital! Proof how low I had sunk: I thought longingly of
        Exeter, of a certain house there - never mind!
            I write hastily. An invitation from some musical people has decided
        me to strike for Vienna. Up there, I shall get my health back. The
        people are of no account - boarding-house acquaintances - but they may
        lead to better. I never in my life suffered so from loneliness.«
 
This was the eighteenth of November. On the twenty-eighth the postman delivered
a letter of an appearance which puzzled Earwaker. The stamp was Austrian, the
mark Wien. From Peak, therefore. But the writing was unknown, plainly that of a
foreigner.
    The envelope contained two sheets of paper. The one was covered with a long
communication in German; on the other stood a few words of English, written, or
rather scrawled, in a hand there was no recognising:
 
        »I'll again, and alone. If I die, act for me. Write to Mrs. Peak,
        Twybridge.«
 
Beneath was added, »J.E. Earwaker, Staple Inn, London.«
    He turned hurriedly to the foreign writing. Earwaker read a German book as
easily as an English, but German manuscript was a terror to him. And the present
correspondent wrote so execrably that beyond Geehrter Herr, scarcely a word
yielded sense to his anxious eyes. Ha! One he had made out - gestorben.
    Crumpling the papers into his pocket, he hastened out, and knocked at the
door of an acquaintance in another part of the Inn. This was a man who had
probably more skill in German cursive. Between them, they extracted the essence
of the letter.
    He who wrote was the landlord of an hotel in Vienna. He reported that an
English gentleman, named Peak, just arrived from Italy, had taken a bedroom at
that house. In the night, the stranger became very ill, sent for a doctor, and
wrote the lines enclosed, the purport whereof
