The night was far spent. For hours Peter had sat by his table with writing materials before him, and at length his letter was written, ended.  
“It is the last time I shall write to you, but I ask you to condone my conduct—at least, sufficiently to read what I have written. I know I have no excuse to make. To say that my deception arose from the knowledge that if you once knew Peter the Piper and Robin Adair as one and the same I should lose your letters is of course none. I deceived you deliberately, and broke the compact that our identities should remain unknown to each other. Though I did not first break it, nor was it broken of my will. Being broken by fate, however, I should have told you.
 
“And by now you will have realized that you extended the hand of friendship to one who had entirely forfeited the right to it. Is it, perhaps, any compensation to you to know that your letters, your kindness, have at least been received with humble gratitude, with the most intense and overwhelming pleasure by one however unworthy to receive them?
 
“I shall leave this cottage at daylight. My presence here longer would, I know, be distasteful to you. I have no right to ask your forgiveness, yet if one day you could extend it to me, and think less hardly of me, I should be glad. The one thing I can do, and believe you would wish me to do, is to destroy your letters. I cannot destroy the memory of them—that is impossible,............