Herr von S. shook his head sympathetically.  “But that wouldn’t work so remarkably well.”

“Oh, yes, sir, if once I get started—­I can’t move very fast, but I’ll get there somehow, and it won’t be as hard as you might think, either.”

“Well,” said the Baron, doubtfully, “do you want to try it?  Here is a letter to P. There is no particular hurry.”  The next day John moved into his little room in the house of a widow in the village.  He carved spoons, ate at the castle, and did errands for the Baron.  On the whole he was getting along tolerably well; the Baron’s family was very kind, and Herr von S. often conversed with him about Turkey, service in Austria, and the ocean.  “John could tell many things,” he said to his wife, “if he wasn’t so downright simple.”

“More melancholic than simple,” she replied; “I am always afraid he’ll lose his wits some day.”

“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.