as for traps, it is always the solver of
riddles who lays his own trap, by looking all round the question and
never straight at it. Put on your thinking-cap, I beg, while I go on
babbling.)

On the March day following the brothers' talk (continued Martin) Lionel
was missing. It was some time before his absence was noticed, for Hobb
was in his distant garden, and Ambrose among his books, and Heriot had
ridden north to the market-town to buy stuff for a jerkin, and Hugh had
run south to the sea to watch the ships. So Lionel was left to his own
devices, and what they were none tried to guess till evening, when the
brothers met again and he was not there. Then there was hue and cry
among the hills, but to no purpose. The child had vanished like a
cloud. And the month wore by, and their hearts grew heavier day by day.

It was in the last week of March that Hugh one morning came red-eyed to
his brothers and said, "I am going away, and I will not come back until
I have found Lionel. For I can't rest."

"None of us can do that," said Ambrose, "and we have searched and sent
messengers everywhere. You are too young to go alone."

"I am nearly fourteen," said Hugh, "and stronger than Heriot, and even
than you, Ambrose, and I can take care of myself and Lionel too. There
are more ways than one to seek, and I'll go my way while you go yours.
But I will find him or die." And he looked with defiance at Ambrose,
and then turned to Hobb and said doggedly, "I'm going, Hobb."

Hobb, who himself sought the hills unwearingly day after day, and then
sat up three parts of the night attending to the duties of the Burgh,
said, "Go, and God bless you."

And Hugh's mouth grew less set, and he kissed his brothers, and put his
knife in his belt, and took food in his wallet, and walked out of the
Burgh. He followed the grass-track to the north, and had walked less
than half-an-hour when the wind took his cap and blew it into the
middle of a pond, where it lay soddening out of reach. So he took off
his shoes and walked into the pond to fetch it out, stirring up the
yellow mud in thick soft clouds. But as he stooped to grab his cap,
something else stirred the mud in the middle, and a body heaved itself
sluggishly into view. At first Hugh thought it must be the body of a
sheep that had tumbled into the water, but to his amazement the sulky
head of an old man appeared. He was barely distinguishable from the mud
out of which he had risen.

"Dra