Tommy was in an einspaenner now, the merry conveyance of the country and more intoxicating than its wines, and he drove back through St. Gian to Bad-Platten, where again he heard from Grizel, though he did not find her.  What he found was her telegram from London:  “I am coming.  Grizel.”  Why had she come? why had she sent that telegram? what had taken her to London?  He was not losing time when he asked himself distractedly these questions, for he was again in his gay carriage and driving back to the wayside inn.  He spent the night there, afraid to go farther lest he should pass her in the darkness; for he had decided that, if alive, she was on this road.  That she had walked all those forty miles uphill seemed certain, and apparently the best he could hope was that she was walking back.  She had probably no money to enable her to take the diligence.  Perhaps she had no money with which to buy food.  It might be that while he lay tossing in bed she was somewhere near, dying for want of a franc.

He was off by morning light, and several times that day he heard of her, twice from people who had seen her pass both going and coming, and he knew it must be she when they said she rocked her arms as she walked.  Oh, he knew why she rocked her arms!  Once he thought he had found her.  He heard of an English lady who was lying ill in the house of a sawmiller, whose dog (we know the dogs of these regions, but not the people) had found her prostrate in the wood, some distance from the highroad.  Leaving his einspaenner in a village, Tommy climbed down the mountain-side to this little house, which he was long in discovering.  It was by the side of a roaring river, and he arrived only an hour too late.  The lady had certainly been Grizel; but she was gone.  The sawyer’s wife described to him how her husband had brought her in, and how she seemed so tired and bewildered that she fell asleep while they were questioning her.  She held her hands over her ears to shut out the noise of the river, which seemed to terrify her.  So far as they could understand, she told them that she was running away from the river.  She had been sleeping there for three hours, and was still asleep when the good woman went off to meet her husband; but when they returned she was gone.

He searched the wood for miles around, crying her name.  The sawyer and some of his fellow-workers left the trees they were stripping of bark to help him, and for hours the wood rang with “Grizel, Grizel!” All the mountains round took up the cry; but there never came an answer.  This long delay prevented his reaching the railway terminus until noon of the following day, and there he was again too late.  But she had been here.  He traced her to that hotel whence we saw her setting forth, and the portier had got a ticket for her for London.  He had talked with her for some little time, and advised her, as she seemed so tired, to remain there for the night.  But she said she must go home at once.  She seemed to be passionately desirous to go home, and had looked at him suspiciously, as if fearing he might try to hold her back.  He had been called away, and on returning had seen her disappearing over the bridge.  He had called to her, and then she ran as if afraid he was pursuing her.  But he had observed her afterwards in the train.