Master Ambrose was too impatient and too much out of breath consciously to register impressions of what was going on round him. But in the automatic unquestioning way in which at such moments the senses do their work, he saw through the windows of the hearse that a red liquid was trickling from the coffin. This enforced delay broke the spell of blind purpose that had hitherto united the pursuers into one. They now ceased to be a pack, and broke up again into separate individuals, each with his own business to attend to. "The little lass is too nimble-heeled for us," they said, grinning ruefully. "Yes, she's a wild goose, that's what she is, and I fear she has led us a wild goose chase," said Master Ambrose with a short embarrassed laugh. He was beginning to be acutely conscious of the unseemliness of the situation--he, an ex-Mayor, a Senator and judge, and, what was more, head of the ancient and honourable family of Honeysuckle, to be pounding through the streets of Lud-in-the-Mist at the tail end of a crowd of 'prentices and artisans, in pursuit of his naughty, crazy wild goose of a little daughter! "Pity it isn't Nat instead of me!" he thought to himself. "I believe he'd rather enjoy it." Just then, a farmer came along in his gig, and seeing the hot breathless company standing puffing and mopping their brows, he asked them if they were seeking a little lass, for, if so, he had passed her a quarter of an hour ago beyond the turnpike, running like a hare, and he'd called out to her to stop, but she would not heed him. By this time Master Ambrose was once more in complete possession of his wits and his breath. He noticed one of his own clerks among the late pursuers, and bade him run back to his stables and order three of his grooms to ride off instantly in pursuit of his daughter. Then he himself, his face very stern, started off for the Academy. It was just as well that he did not hear the remarks of his late companions as they made their way back to town; for he would have found them neither sympathetic nor respectful. The Senators were certainly not loved by the rabble. However, not having heard Moonlove's eldritch shrieks nor her wild remarks, they supposed that her father had been bullying her for some mild offence, and that, in consequence, she had taken to her heels. "And if all these fat pigs of Senators," they said, "were set running like that a little oftener, why, then, they'd make better bacon!" Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself. She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red. "Now, Miss Crabapple!" he cried in a voice of thunder, "What, by the Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if she's been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I've come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it."