“Do you mean you can’t, or won’t?”

“I know nothing, Monsieur, except that I have been paid well, and told that I may go home as soon as I like, and by what route I like, having delivered the letter to Monsieur.  My young master gave me enough to return with the donkeys to Mentone all the way from Chambery by rail if I chose; but I prefer to walk down, and keep the extra money for my dot.  It will make me a good one.”

I am not sure that, before disentangling a huge bottle-fly from Fanny’s long lashes, she did not glance under her own at Joseph, when giving this information.

“Look here, Innocentina,” I said beguilingly, “tell me which way, and how, your young Monsieur has gone, and I will double that dot of yours.”

“Not if you would quadruple it, Monsieur.  I promised my master to say nothing.”

“Couldn’t you get absolution for breaking a promise?”

“No, Monsieur.  I am not that kind of Catholic.  It is only heretics who break their promises, and take money for it—­like Judas Iscariot.”

Joseph did not charge at this red rag, but looked so utterly depressed that Innocentina’s eyes relented.

“Very well,” I said.  “You deserve praise for your loyalty.  I ought not to have tried to corrupt it.  But, you know, I shall find out in the town, or at the railway station.”

Innocentina smiled.  “I do not think so, Monsieur.”

“We shall see,” I retorted.  “Joseph, where is the railway station?”

Joseph pointed, accompanying his gesture with directions.  Then he offered to be my guide, but I refused his services and left him with Innocentina, having bidden him call at my room in the hotel for instructions later.

But the prophecy of Innocentina the Seeress was fulfilled.  I could learn nothing of the Boy or his movements, at the gare of Chambery.  Several trains had gone out, bound for several destinations in different directions, during the past three hours, and no one answering the description I gave of the Boy had been seen to leave.

Sadder, but no wiser, I returned to the Hotel de France, and asked if a youth of seventeen, “with large blue eyes, chestnut hair which curled, a complexion tanned brown, a panama hat, and a suit of navy-blue serge knickerbockers,” had lunched there.

The answer was no.  Such a yoking gentleman had not come to the hotel, nor had he been noticed in the town, either with or without a young woman and a couple of donkeys.

I had no more than finished my questionings and gone up to my room, when Joseph arrived—­a wistful, expectant Joseph, with a deep light of excitement burning in his eyes.

“Any news?” I asked.

“No, Monsieur, except that in an hour Innocentina starts to walk on to Les Echelles with her anes.”

“She is energetic.”

“The girl knows not what is the fatigue.  Besides, each day less on the road means so many more francs added to the dot.”