Here such a violent fit of coughing seized him that he ran away into the house.

An ill-fed clerk and a dirty barman standing in the doorway laughed aloud.

Gregory wondered if they could be laughing at the gentleman's cough, and then he heard some one laughing in the room into which the gentleman had gone.
He must follow him and try to learn more; but he soon found that there was nothing more to be learnt there.

Poor Gregory! Backward and forward, backward and forward, from the dirty little hotel where he had dropped the thread, to this farm and to that, rode Gregory, till his heart was sick and tired.

That from that spot the wagon might have gone its own way and the spider another was an idea that did not occur to him.