The girl began to cry again; Gotthold said a few words which were intended to be consoling, and was then obliged to turn away, for his own grief threatened to overpower him. The sobbing girl had reminded him of the sunny days when he sought out Cecilia in the garden, and played with Gretchen among the flower-beds. When he came out of the house again, the men had finished their meals and were ready to set out. Prebrow, the blacksmith, was to search the forest on the left, and the Statthalter on the right of the road to Dahlitz. Cousin Boslaf would keep to the road itself. They were just going when Gotthold's chaise jolted into the courtyard; the spring was now entirely broken, and the tire was off of one wheel. Cousin Boslaf asked the Statthalter whether Herr Wenhofs old carriage was still there, and capable of being used. The carriage was there, and might be made fit for use. Then Clas Prebrow should repair it, put in a pair of fresh horses, and follow them. Gotthold looked at the old man inquiringly. "I shall seek till I find her," said Cousin Boslaf, pushing the rifle farther over his shoulder, "and I shall find her--alive or dead; in either case we shall need the carriage." They reached the forest; the men had already spread out to the right and left, and now pressed eagerly into its depths. "I shall keep to the road," said Cousin Boslaf as they walked on side by side. "I can trust my old eyes, and I almost believe she has taken this way. She would reach the forest sooner, and directly behind the woods, in a ploughed field on the right, is the great marl-pit. When she was a child, a poor girl who had killed her new-born babe drowned herself there." The old man did not change his long, regular stride as he spoke, and his keen eyes searched the deep furrows of the rough road, or glanced over the bashes and tree trunks on either side, between which, here in the depths of the forest, the darkness already brooded gloomily. The men within the woods shouted to each other, in order to keep together: oftentimes one of the dogs they had taken with them barked loudly, then for a moment all was silent again, save the wind sighing through the treetops, and shaking the rain-drops from the leaves. Then the old man paused, listened, and went on again, after convincing himself that the men still kept to their track, and nothing remarkable had happened. So they came to the end of the forest, whose dark edge stretched out into the twilight on either side as far as the eye could reach. Nothing was to be seen of the men, who had been obliged to make their way through the underbrush more slowly. Cousin Boslaf pointed towards the right, where a short distance from the road, in the ploughed field, a round spot was relieved against the darker earth; it was the marl-pit, which the continual rain of the last few days had filled nearly to the brim.