The boy will not return.

The fellow who has placed him in your hands has calculated wrongly this time.

He, no doubt, hoped that I, at such a distance, would credulously accept everything that he wanted, and would do what he wished.

Now he has found out that I myself was on the way to see you; and to bring before my eyes some foundling as my daughter's child, that he did not dare to do.

On that account the child has disappeared, Reverend Sir; that man knows me." However much the pastor might assure the colonel that no one had interfered in the case, that the boy, after his mother's death, without anyone's intercession had come into the parsonage, and that from the boy himself, without himself knowing it, had come the suggestions about the country and the name of the grandfather,--all explanation of the pastor did no good, the sturdy gentleman adhered to his firm opinion that the whole thing was the invented trick of a man who wished to make money, and that the disappearance of the boy at the necessary moment confirmed it.
"But how should, how could the man of whom you speak--" The colonel did not listen to the end of the sentence.