then with keener; but it was some twenty minutes before he
satisfied himself that neither his charge nor Pollyooly were on the
sands. Then he set out, in some annoyance to search the village; and
when he had drawn blank all the village shops at which sweets were sold,
he began to grow anxious and alarmed. For all his military contempt for
the English as a people soon to be subjugated, he had a deep distrust of
them. It awoke suddenly in its most violent form; and he began to
suspect that the perfidious politicians of England had stolen his
Hohenzollern.

The suspicion presently became a conviction; and he acted on it with
splendid, but unwonted, energy. In little more than ten minutes the
village was ringing with the news that the prince was lost; and the baron
was toddling furiously along at the head of a band composed of the
village children, the village idiot, some idle fishermen, and a number of
unoccupied visitors who had leapt at the chance of action. There was no
lack of theories. Every other member of the group had one of his own.
The baron himself made no secret of his belief that the prince was the
victim of a political plot, till the Honourable John Ruffin, out of mere
idle curiosity, stopped the procession to enquire its object and on
learning it proclaimed his firm conviction that the prince was neither
lost, stolen, nor strayed.

By this time the news had spread to the sands; and a nurse came hurrying
up with the information that the prince had gone into the marsh,
mushrooming with Pollyooly.

"Ach Gott! Then that little she-devil-child haf 'im drowned in a dyke!"
said the baron cheerfully.

The suggestion increased greatly the interest of his followers; and they
accompanied him into the marsh eagerly. On that expanse figures are seen
at a great distance; but the searchers had gone a long way into it before
they caught sight of the children. At some distance the figures of
Pollyooly and the Lump, and even the basket of mushrooms were plainly
recognised. But what was that strange object which moved beside them?
The baron and his band quickened their steps, Pollyooly still walked at
the leisurely gait which suited the Lump.

It was not till he was within ten yards of them that the procession and
the baron recognised his young charge. The procession began to laugh
heartily.

The baron flung his arms to heaven and cried, or, to be exact, howled:

"Vhat is it you haf done ad 'im?"

"I didn'