"Drive on. We have nothing to learn here."

But Paul said: "NQ let us turn back. He cannot have walked this far
in one day. We must have passed him on the road."

"Perhaps you could not have walked so far," said Bilinski, with a
sneer. "But Stanislaus could. Drive on!"

Forty miles or more out of Vienna, they saw a boy trudging ahead of
them, in a rough tunic, rope-girdled, with a staff in his hand. At
the noise of the hurrying wheels the boy glanced back, then quickly
turned up a lane which there entered the road. He did not look in
the least like a nobleman's son, and the carriage passed the bottom
of the lane without so much as slacking speed.

Stanislaus ran up the lane until he came to where it ended at a
rough, brawling stream. Without a moment's hesitation he put off his
shoes, tucked up his tunic, and began wading in the course of the
stream. The water was cold, the sharp stones in the bed of the
stream bruised his feet, at any moment he might fall into a deep
hole and be drowned. But he splashed and stumbled ahead, as fast as
he could go, praying to his guardian angel to have care of him. A
little farther, he knew, the highway crossed this stream by a
bridge, and there he could leave the water and regain the road.

The carriage meantime kept on and came to this bridge. But Paul had
been thinking of the young fellow who took to the lane when he saw
the carriage approach and a shrewd suspicion came into his head.

"Did you see that boy who ran up the lane?" he cried at length to