“Come along!” screamed the child to its comrades; “we will go and look for rings.” “You must seek separately,” said Swiatek. The children scampered off into the wood. “I have done one good thing for you,” laughed the beggar, “in ridding you, for a time, of the noise of those children.” “I am glad of a little quiet now and then,” said the woman; “the children will not let the baby sleep at times with their clatter. Are you going?” “Yes; I must reach Polomyja to-night. I am old and very feeble, and poor”—he began to fall into his customary whine— very poor, but I thank and pray to God for you.” Swiatek left the cottage. _That little orphan was never seen again._ The Austrian Government has, of late years, been vigorously advancing education among the lower orders, and establishing schools throughout the province. The children were returning from class one day, and were scattered among the trees, some pursuing a field-mouse, others collecting juniper-berries, and some sauntering with their hands in their pockets, whistling. “Where’s Peter?” asked one little boy of another who was beside him. “We three go home the same way, let us go together.” “Peter!” shouted the lad. “Here I am!” was the answer from among the trees; “I’ll be with you directly.” “Oh, I see him!” said the elder boy. “There is some one talking to him.” “Where?” “Yonder, among the pines. Ah! they have gone further into the shadow, and I cannot see them any more. I wonder who was with him; a man, I think.” The boys waited till they were tired, and then they sauntered home, determined to thrash Peter for having kept them waiting. _But Peter was never seen again._ Some time after this a servant-girl, belonging to a small store kept by a Russian, disappeared from a village five miles from Polomyja. She had been sent with a parcel of grocery to a cottage at no very great distance, but lying apart from the main cluster of hovels, and surrounded by trees. The day closed in, and her master waited her return anxiously, but as several hours elapsed without any sign of her, he—assisted by the neighbours—went in search of her. A slight powdering of snow covered the ground, and her footsteps could be traced at intervals where she had diverged from the beaten track. In that part of the road where the trees were thickest, there were marks of two pair of feet leaving the path; but owing to the density of the trees at that spot and to the slightness of the fall of snow, which did not reach the soil, where shaded by the pines, the footprints were immediately lost. By the following morning a heavy fall had obliterated any further traces which day-light might have discovered. _The servant-girl also was never seen again._ During the winter of 1849 the wolves were supposed to have been particularly ravenous, for thus alone did people account for the mysterious disappearances of children.