“But I feel so anxious about him,” said his sister.  “I would ask the police to see to it but am ashamed, for I had to apply to them when his purse was lost, then when his dog was lost and now it would be to tell them that both dog and boy are gone.  Uncle Braun put a notice in the paper about the dog, and oh dear! there seems to be no end to what that notice brought;” and she told of the letters and the dog fight.

“I am sorry you bothered about it for there is no need.  He can take care of himself.  He is eleven years old, has money in his purse, and is afraid of nothing, so what is the need of worrying?  Yet it may be that he has not left Frankfort, and if it will be a comfort to you we will try to find the young rascal.  There are two railways which he could take to go home, so you and the two boys can go to the Eastern station, and I will go to the other, which will leave us plenty of time to see both departures for the Odenwald and one of us will catch him if he is there to be caught.  Have you a schedule?”

“No, I have no need of one from one year’s end to another.  But suppose he refuses to come back with us?”

“No danger of that when he hears that I am here.  He will not think that he can get back quickly enough.”

Mrs. Steiner locked the hall door and they hurried away, taking the shortest way to the two depots.  It was not likely that one spy at the one and the three at the other would miss seeing the runaway, especially as he would be accompanied by his four-footed traveling companion, and would perhaps be the only boy in the crowd with a dog.

“Fritz will have to travel in a freight car,” remarked Paul as the three neared the depot; “the guard will not allow Pixy in a passenger car, and Fritz will not let his dog go in there alone.”

“Oh, Paul, you should have mentioned this before!  Brother Fritz will never think of it, and the boy will be stowed in a freight car without his father finding him, and we here, not knowing whether or not he is in Frankfort.”

“Mr. Heil will think of it, I am sure,” said Franz, “for Fritz wrote a letter home on Thursday, and in it he told them about Pixy and the chickens.”

“We can only hope so,” sighed Mrs. Steiner, “and when we reach the depot, you, Paul, can watch the freight cars, Franz can watch the passenger cars, and I will go first into the waiting-rooms to see if he is there.  Then we can all watch the crowd upon the platform and see if Fritz is among them.”

This program was followed, but Fritz and his dog were not to be seen, and they could only hope that Mr. Heil would be more successful.

“But I will not see him until we get home,” said Mrs. Steiner, “so will send a telegram to Fritz’s mother, telling her that the boy set out for home about noon, and when he arrives there, she would please send me a telegram to that effect, as I am extremely anxious about him.”

No sooner thought of than done.  She hurried into the office, gave her message to the operator who made quite a reduction in the number of words, thus lessening the expense, and then the three would have set out for home had not Paul made a study of the schedule and found that the train which Mr. Heil had gone to watch would not leave for fifteen minutes.