When Fanfaro went to search for Louison, his mother had remained behind under the protection of Caillette. The day passed, night came, but neither Fanfaro, Girdel nor Bobichel returned. The maniac screamed and cried. She wanted to see Jacques, and Caillette could hardly calm her. Finally long past midnight she fell into a slumber, and Caillette, too, exhausted by the excitement of the last few hours, closed her eyes.
When she awoke it was daylight. She glanced at the maniac's bed. Merciful Heaven, it was empty!
Trembling with fear, Caillette hurried downstairs and asked the janitress whether she had seen anything of the "Burned Woman." The janitress looked at her in amazement and said she had thought at once when she saw the old crippled woman creeping down the stairs two hours before that all was not right in her head.
"But she cannot walk at all, how could she get out?" groaned Caillette. "Suppose Fanfaro came now and found that his mother was gone?"
"A milk-wagon stopped in front of the door," said the janitress, "and the driver let the old woman get in. I thought it had been arranged beforehand and was all right."
Caillette wrung her hands and then hurried to the station house and announced the disappearance of the "Burned Woman."
If her father and Bobichel, even Fanfaro, had come, she would have felt at ease. But no one showed himself, and Caillette, who knew that Girdel and Fanfaro were wanted, did not dare to make any inquiries.
She ran about in desperation. The only clew was the milkman, but where could she find him? Caillette passed hours of dreadful anxiety, and when a ragpicker told her that he saw a woman who answered her description pass the Barriere d'Italie on a milk-wagon, she thought him a messenger of God.
As quick as she could go, she ran to the place designated; a hundred times on the way, she said to herself that the wagon must have gone on; and yet it struck like a clap of thunder when she found it was really so. What now? Caillette asked from house to house; every one had seen the woman, but she had gone in a different direction; and so the poor child wandered onward, right and left, forward and backward, always hoping to discover them. Finally, after she had been thirty-six hours on the way, she found the maniac in a little tavern by the roadside. She was crouching near the threshold, and smiled when she saw Caillette.
"God be praised! I have found you," cried the young girl, sobbing; and when the hostess, who had been standing in the background, heard these words, she joyfully said: