th. At the end
of the seven miles he had not overtaken it, nor was there any
appearance of it on the road before him, a level stretch of two miles.
However, he ran on another five miles, and there was no sign of it, nor
had anyone he passed or met, seen it. Plainly he had overshot it.

He turned the car, and came back, stopping to examine branch roads for
its wheel-tracks, losing the ground he had made up. Some seven miles
back, he came to a road leading to a great gap in the hills. A little
girl was feeding a few lean sheep at the corner of it. No: she had
seen no carriage; she had only been here a little while: the road ran
up to Camporossa. Tinker considered it, and it invited his search. It
went high into the hills, and he saw little towns here and there on
their sides. He sent the car slowly down it. For seventy yards the
roadway was hard, or stony; then came a patch of dust, smooth and
unmarked by a wheel-track. Any vehicle going along the road must have
passed over it, and a wave of disappointment submerged Tinker's spirit;
the road had seemed so very much the right one. He stopped the car,
and stared blankly at the patch of dust. Suddenly his quick eye caught
a curious marking on its surface. He jumped down, and bent over it:
sure enough, the patch had been brushed and smoothed with a bough.

He hurried the car back to the corner of the road, and by entreaties,
persuasion, cajoling, a five-franc piece, and even--great
concession!--a kiss, he wrung from the little shepherdess a promise
that she would wait till dark if need were, stop every motor-car that
came from the direction of the frontier, and say, "The kidnappers have
gone up this road." He was assured that his father would borrow or
hire a motorcar, and follow in it.

Then he turned the car for Camporossa. Three hundred yards up the road
he came to another patch of dust, and saw the wheel-tracks of the
carriage deep and plain. He sent along the car as hard as he dared,
for, as the road grew steeper along the hillside, it grew stonier and
stonier, thanks to its serving, like most Italian hill roads, as a
watercourse to carry off the rain from the hills. A very slow and
painful jolting brought him among the olive groves of Camporossa and
into that little town.

He stopped before the little Inn, and was served with milk and bread
and fruit. As he ate and drank, he was all affability and information
to the group of the curious who gathere