They went away early one morning, how, or in which way, the girl could not tell.
Gregory inquired of the servants, but nothing more was to be learnt; so the next morning he saddled his horse and went on.

At the farms he came to the good old ooms and tantes asked him to have coffee, and the little shoeless children peeped out at the stranger from behind ovens and gables; but no one had seen what he asked for.

This way and that he rode to pick up the thread he had dropped, but the spider and the wagon, the little lady and the handsome gentleman, no one had seen.

In the towns he fared yet worse.
Once indeed hope came to him.

On the stoep of an hotel at which he stayed the night in a certain little village, there walked a gentleman, grave and kindly-looking.