"But if you did go?"
"If I did go, there would be a road, and I would take the road."
There was no answer to be given to the goose-girl.
"All right," said George, "we will certainly find a path in the wood further on."
"We will pick nuts there," said Bee, "and eat them, for I am hungry. We must, when we come again to the lake, bring a bag full of things good to eat."
George:
"We will do as you say, little sister. I now approve the plan of the squire Freeheart, who, when he set out for Rome, took with him a ham for hunger and a demijohn for thirst. But we must hurry, for it seems to me it is getting late, though I do not know the time."
"Shepherdesses know it by looking at the sun," said Bee; "but I am not a shepherdess. Yet it seems to me that this sun, which was above our heads when we started, is now over there, far behind the town and the land of the Clarides. I wish I knew whether this is the case every day, and what it means."
While they thus observed the sun a cloud of dust rose on the road, and they saw horsemen, who moved towards them at full gallop and whose armour glittered. The children were very frightened and went and hid in the underwoods. They are robbers, or rather ogres, they thought. But really they were men-at-arms sent by the Duchess of Clarides to search for the two little adventurers.
The two little adventurers found a narrow path in the underwood which was not a lover's path, for two could not walk side by side holding each other by the hand, as lovers do. Further, the footprints were not human. Only a track made by a multitude of little hoofed feet was visible.