“Matters went off very pleasantly, until we arrived at Vienna, and I hired a neat lodging in a quiet part of the city, where I determined to spend the winter. The next morning I went out, accompanied by Adolphe, to examine the lions of the place. By accident we got entangled in a crowd, which had collected in one of the principal thoroughfares, to witness a fire. While striving to stem my way through the heaving mass of human forms that hedged us in on every side, I suddenly missed my child. To find him among such a multitude, was, indeed, to look for a needle in a waggon of hay; yet I commenced the search in utter desperation. “I ran hither and thither, wherever I could find an opening, frantically calling upon Adolphe. I asked every person whom I met—‘If they had seen my boy?’ Some pitied—some laughed; but the greater number bade me stand out of their way. I was mad with fear and excitement, and returned to my lodgings late in the evening, starving with hunger, and worn out with fatigue of mind and body. I hoped that the child might have found his way home, and was waiting me there. Alas! Adolphe had not been seen, and I went to bed too much vexed to eat my supper. “Early the next morning I resumed my search. I hired the public cryer to proclaim my loss; I borrowed a large bell from my landlady, and went through all the streets crying him myself, hoping that he would recognise my voice. Alas! alas! I never saw my child again!” “Never?” said Flora. “Was he irrevocably lost?” “Lost, lost, lost!” said Wilhelmina, shaking her head. “This comes of adopting other people’s brats. Had he been a worthless, spoilt imp of my own, I should have been more successful. I stayed in Vienna all the winter. I advertised him in the papers. I had placards, offering a large reward for his discovery, pasted on the walls of the principal streets; but I failed in recovering my poor Adolphe. To console myself for his loss, I painted that portrait of him from memory. ’Tis an admirable likeness. No one who had ever seen the original, could mistake it for another. It was just a week after I lost my child, that the mistress of the house, in compassion for my distress, presented me with my incomparable Muff. Fortune owed me a good turn, for the ill-natured trick she had played me. It would not have been difficult for me to have found another red-headed boy, as amiable as Adolphe; but such a prize as Muff is only to be met with once in a life.” “And the parents of the poor child,—how did they bear his loss?” “To tell you the truth, my dear, I never knew. I never wish to know; for, without Adolphe, I never mean to venture into their neighbourhood again.” “Let us hope,” said Flora, “that the child found his way back to his native mountains.”