fer, I rather want to become a highway-robber and
murderer, and go to hell, than to become like you! I hate you, you're
not my father, and if you've ten times been my mother's fornicator!"

Rage and grief boiled over in him, foamed at the father in a hundred
savage and evil words. Then the boy ran away and only returned late at
night.

But the next morning, he had disappeared. What had also disappeared was
a small basket, woven out of bast of two colours, in which the ferrymen
kept those copper and silver coins which they received as a fare.
The boat had also disappeared, Siddhartha saw it lying by the opposite
bank. The boy had ran away.

"I must follow him," said Siddhartha, who had been shivering with grief
since those ranting speeches, the boy had made yesterday. "A child
can't go through the forest all alone. He'll perish. We must build a
raft, Vasudeva, to get over the water."

"We will build a raft," said Vasudeva, "to get our boat back, which the
boy has taken away. But him, you shall let run along, my friend, he is
no child any more, he knows how to get around. He's looking for the
path to the city, and he is right, don't forget that. He's doing what
you've failed to do yourself. He's taking care of himself, he's taking
his course. Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering
a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for
yourself."

Siddhartha did not answer. He already held the axe in his hands and
began to make a raft of bamboo, and Vasudeva helped him to tied the
canes together with ropes of grass. Then they crossed over, drifted
far off their course, pulled the raft upriver on the opposite bank.

"Why did you take the axe along?" asked Siddhartha.

Vasudeva said: "It might have been possible that the oar of our boat
got lost."

But Siddhartha knew what his friend was thinking. He thought, the boy
would have thrown away or broken the oar in order to get even and in
order to keep them from following him. And in fact, there was no oar
left in the boat. Vasudeva pointed to the bottom of the boat and looked
at his friend with a smile, as if he wanted to say: "Don't you see what
your son is trying to tell you? Don't you see that he doesn't want to
be followed?" But he did not say this in words. He started making a
new oar. But Siddhartha bid his farewell, to look for the run-away.
Vasudeva did not stop him.

When Siddhartha had already bee