"Not a bit of it," answered the Baron; "he's been a simpleton all his life; simple people never go crazy." Some time after, John stayed away much longer than usual on an errand. The good Frau von S. was greatly worried and was already on the point of sending out people, when they heard him limping up the stairs.
"You stayed out a long time, John," she said; "I was beginning to think you had lost your way in the forest of Brede."
"I went through Fir-tree Hollow."
"Why, that's a long roundabout way! Why didn't you go through the Brede
Woods?"
He looked up at her sadly. "People told me the woods were cut down and there were now so many paths this way and that way that I was afraid I would not find my way out. I am growing old and shaky," he added slowly.
"Did you see," Frau von S. said afterwards to her husband, "what a queer, squinting look there was in his eyes? I tell you, Ernest, there's a bad ending in store for him!"
Meanwhile September was approaching. The fields were empty, the leaves were beginning to fall, and many a hectic person felt the scissors on his life's thread. John, too, seemed to be suffering under the influence of the approaching equinox; those who saw him at this time said he looked particularly disturbed and talked to himself incessantly—something which he used to do at times, but not very often. At last one evening he did not come home. It was thought the Baron had sent him somewhere. The second day he was still not there. On the third his housekeeper grew anxious. She went to the castle and inquired. "God forbid!" said the Baron, "I know nothing of him; but, quick!—call the forester and his son William! If the poor cripple," he added, in agitation, "has fallen even into a dry pit, he cannot get out again. Who knows if he may not even have broken one of his distorted limbs! Take the dogs along," he called to the foresters on their way, "and, first of all, search in the quarries; look among the stone-quarries," he called out louder.
The foresters returned home after a few hours; no trace had been found. Herr von S. was restless. "When I think of such a man, forced to lie like a stone and unable to help himself, I—but he may still be alive; a man can surely hold out three days without food." He set out himself; inquiry was made at every house, horns were blown everywhere, alarms were sent out, and dogs set on the trail—in vain! A child had seen him sitting at the edge of the forest of Brede, carving a spoon. "But he cut it right in two," said the little girl. That had happened two days before. In the afternoon there was another clue. Again a child had seen him on the other side of the woods, where he had been sitting in the shrubbery, with his face resting on his knees as though he were asleep. That was only the day before. It seemed he had kept rambling about the forest of Brede.
"If only that damned shrubbery weren't so dense! Not a soul can get through it," said the Baron. The dogs were driven to the place where the woods had just been cut down; the searching-party blew their horns and hallooed, but finally returned home, dissatisfied, when they had convinced themselves that the animals had made a thorough search of the whole forest. "Don't give up! Don't give up!" begged Frau von S. "It's better to take a few steps in vain than to leave anything undone." The Baron was almost as worried as she; his restlessness even drove him to John's room, although he was sure not to find him there. He had the room of the lost man opened. Here stood his bed still in disorder as he had left it; there hung his good coat which the Baroness had had made for him out of the Baron's old hunting-suit; on the table lay a bowl, six new wooden spoons, and a box. Herr von S. opened the box; five groschen lay in it, neatly wrapped in paper, and four silver vest-buttons. The Baron examined them with interest. "A remembrance from Mergel," he muttered, and stepped out, for he felt quite oppressed in the musty, close room. The search was continued until they had convinced themselves that John was no longer in the vicinity—at least, not alive.
So, then, he had disappeared for the second time! Would they ever find him again—perhaps some time, after many years, find his bones in a dry pit? There was little hope of seeing him again alive, or, at all events, certainly not after another twenty-eight years.