Though inquiries were made on
every road, in every village, and at all the fairs and markets in the
neighborhood, two whole years passed by, without a trace of the boy.
But early one morning of the twenty-fifth month, before breakfast, his
mother, on opening the door, found him sitting on the steps, with a
bundle under his arm, but dressed in the same clothes, and not looking
a day older or in any way different, from the very hour he
disappeared.
"Why my dear boy, where have you been, all these months, which have
now run into the third year--so long a time that they have seemed to
me like ages?"
"Why, mother dear, how strange you talk. I left here yesterday, to go
out and to play with the children, on the hills, and we have had a
lovely time. See what pretty clothes they have given me for a
present." Then he opened his bundle.
But when she tore open the package, the mother was all the more sure
that she was right, and that her fears had been justified. In it she
found only a dress of white paper. Examining it carefully, she could
see neither seam nor stitches. She threw it in the fire, and again
warned her son against fairy children.
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