Encouraged and relieved by this thought, she did not look for Aster any longer, but went to a little spring bubbling up between two rough stones, and which was the only pleasant thing she could see in this rocky place. She knelt down by it, for she was thirsty, to drink from its cool and sparkling waters, and then to wash her face and hands in them; and as she dipped her hands in the spring, the little ripples they made whispered, softly, “Over yonder! over yonder!” but Eva was not sure if she really had heard these words; or only imagined them. Refreshed by the cool waters she went back to the great, rough, stone wall, intending to secure her charge, and then try to go on. But what was her surprise, on returning, as she thought, to the same stone on which she had slept, to see that there were so many stones just exactly like it, that she could not find the one she wanted! and, what was still stranger, she saw that over every little hole, every tiny cavity in the stone, there was a white mark exactly like the one which she had made over the crevice into which Aster had crept, and she could not say which of them all was hers. She was in despair for a moment. How was she to find, among all these holes, each with the same white mark over it, the one in which Aster was asleep? Then she remembered that standing still and looking at the wall would do no good; that if she wanted to find Aster she must look for him; and Eva determined to examine every hole she saw, in hopes that with patience and perseverance she might at last succeed in finding her lost charge, of whom, in spite of all the trouble he had given her, she had grown very fond. But if she had been surprised at seeing a white mark over every hole, instead of the one she had made, she was still more astonished when she saw that in every cranny which she examined there sat either a large black-legged spider, with a gold and scarlet back, and eyes which shone in the dark like little bright stars, or else there squatted snugly in it a huge green frog, with a wide mouth and projecting black eyes; while just beyond her reach there would flutter every now and then a little green flag, like the scrap of velvet, as Eva thought, which the teeth of the frog had torn from Aster’s coat. Yet the child climbed slowly up the wall, fearless of the spiders and the frogs, which she knew had no power to harm her, even if they had wished it. But seeing them, and knowing, as she did, that these two creatures, in the forest through which they had passed, had tried to get possession of Aster, Eva began to fear that by creeping into the hole he had put himself in their power, and that she would never be able to find him again.