Now she went on to tell them that he had not made his appearance at breakfast, nor at dinner-time, and that he had not been in bed the previous night, for she had found it as she had left it; and she believed that he must have gone away very early in the morning before daybreak, wandering about as he was in the habit of doing, for the bolt was pushed aside on the house-door when she went to open it. She thought at first that she must have forgotten to bolt it the night before in her anger, for nobody knew how angry she had been.
"Something has happened to him," said the father, quite unmoved. "He has probably fallen into some cleft up there on the mountain: it often happens to little boys who go climbing about everywhere.
"You ought to have spoken of it earlier in the day," he went on slowly. "We shall have to go to look for him, and in the night you can't see any thing."
At these words the cousin broke out into a terrible uproar. She expected there would be all sorts of fault found with her; that was always the way when you had suffered for years, and never said any thing about it.
"Nobody would ever believe," she said,—and spoke a truthful word then, at least,—"what a sly, cunning, deceitful boy that is, and what a life he has led me these four years. He will turn out a regular vagabond, a tramp, a disgraceful creature."
The grandmother had ceased eating for several minutes. She now rose from the table, and went up to the cousin, who was talking very noisily.
"Stop, neighbor, stop," she said; and repeated it twice without effect. "I know Rico very well; I have always known him ever since he was brought here to his grandmother. If I were in your place, I would not say another word, but stop to think whether the lad, to whom perhaps something dreadful has happened, and who may be standing up there before God at this moment, may not have some complaint against somebody,—somebody who had done him a heavy injury, all deserted as he is, with her cruel words."
Since Rico's disappearance, the way the lad looked at her on that last evening had occurred several times to the cousin's mind, and how he said,—
"I can easily get out of your way."
That was why she had made such a noise about it, in order to drown these words. Now she did not dare to look the grandmother in the face, but said that she must go: perhaps Rico might be at the cottage by this time, which she would very gladly have had come true.