The letter said:
Writing here dear Peter at twelve o'clock noon, the Red Crown Inn,
Druttledge, on the road to Exeter, a little house where thiccy
bandy-legged man you've heard me tell about is Keeper and a good
fellow and there's queer enough company in kitchen now to please you.
A rough lot of fellows: and a storm coming up black over high woods
that'll make walkin' no easy matter on a slimy road, and, dear boy,
I've been thinkin' strange about you and 'ow you'll pull along with
your kind friends. That nice gentleman sent a telegram as he promised
to and says you pull finely along. Hopin' you really are better. But
dear boy, if you find you can give me just a word on paper sayin' that
hear there is no course for worryin' about your health, then I'm happy
because, dear boy, you'm always in my thoughts and I love you fine and
wish to God I could have made everything easier up along in thiccy
Bucket Lane. I go from hear by road to Cornwall and Treliss. I'm
expecting to find work there. Dear boy, don't forget me and see me
again one day and write a letter. They are getting too much into their
bellies and making the devil's own noise. There is Thunder coming the
air is that still over the roof of the barn and the road's dead white.
Dear Boy, I am your friend,
STEPHEN BRANT.
The candles blew a little in the breeze from the open window and the lighted shadows ran flickering in silver lines, along the dark floor. Peter stood holding the letter in his hand, looking out on to the black square of sky; the lights of the barges swung down the river and he could hear, very faintly, the straining of ropes and the turning of some mysterious wheel.
He saw Stephen—the great head, the flowing beard, the huge body—and then the inn with the thunder coming over the hill, and then, beyond that Treliss gleaming with its tiers of lights, above the breast of the sea. And from here, from this wide Embankment, down to that sea, there stretched, riding over hills, bending into valleys, always white and hard and stony, the road....
For an instant he felt as though the studio, the lights, the comforts were holding him like a prison—
“It's a letter from Stephen Brant,” he said, turning back from the window. “He seems well and happy—”
“Where is he?”
“Eating bread and cheese at an inn somewhere—on the road down to Cornwall.”
IV
On the following Tuesday “Reuben Hallard” was published and on the Thursday afternoon Henry Galleon and Clare Rossiter were to come to tea. “Reuben Hallard” arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label. The six copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had nothing whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them, opened one of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was the best stuff he'd ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought that the author, whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment for writing such nonsense.