e 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