I had forgotten the Contessa, and my promise to return immediately with tidings from the front.  All I thought of was, which direction should I take to find the Boy.  Ought I to turn towards the town or away from it?

Before I reached the garden gate, not many metres from the door, I had decided to try the town way; and lest I should be doing the wrong thing and have to rectify my mistake later, I ran as a lamplighter is popularly supposed to run, but doesn’t and never did.

The Boy and his companion would be walking, and, if I were on the right track, I was almost sure to catch them up sooner or later at this pace, before they could reach the town and turn off into some side street.

I had not been galloping along through the fresh, grey mud for three hundred metres when I saw two figures moving slowly a few paces ahead.  One was small and slender, the other of middle height and strongly built.

“Boy, is that you?” I shouted.

The slim figure turned, and I mumbled a “Thank goodness!”

“Little wretch!” I exclaimed heartily, as I joined the couple ahead.  “How could you go off alone like this with a stranger, perhaps a ruffian (he looks it), without leaving any word for me?  You deserve to be shaken.”

“You wouldn’t say he looked a ruffian, if you could see his face.  I’m sure he’s honest.  And as for sending word, I didn’t care to disturb you and—­your Contessa.”

“Hang the—­no, of course, I don’t mean that.  Luckily I was in time to catch you, and——­”

“Did the Contessa send you after me, or did——­”

“She doesn’t know what’s become of you.  There was no time for politenesses.  You gave me some bad moments, little brute.  Now, tell me what you’re about.”

He explained that the peasant (who understood no word of English) was an Italian who had come to Martigny to find work as a road mender, that he had been taken ill and lost his job; that he had tramped back over the St. Bernard to Aosta, near which place he had once lived; that the work he had heard of there was already given to another; and that, walking back to rejoin his family near Martigny, he had found the bag on the Pass.  He had brought it home, and had only just learned the address of the owner, as set forth in the handbills.

“Why didn’t he bring the bag to you, and claim the reward?” I asked.

“It is at the house of the priest, and the priest has been away all day, visiting a relative in the country somewhere, who is ill, so this man, Andriolo Stefani, couldn’t get the bag.  But he came to tell me that it was found, and where it was.”

“And he pretends to be guiding you to the house of the priest now?”

“No.  I’m going to his house—­or rather, the room where he and his wife and children live.”

“For goodness’ sake, why?”

“Because he’s refused to accept the reward for finding the bag.”

“By Jove, he must have some deep game.  What reason did he give, and what excuse did he make, for dragging you off to his lair?  It sounds as if he meant to try and kidnap you for a ransom—­(these things do happen, you know)—­and there are probably others in it besides himself.  I don’t believe in the priest, nor the wife and children, nor even in his having found the bag.”