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driven out of the street, there was a lot of discussion
in the shops as to whether he was right to put himself
to so much trouble. * That man has the moral
standards of an earlier generation/ said Wouters ;
c he realises that we are responsible for all members
of our households, and there's no one has better
reason for knowing that than he has.'
The sun was going down when the boys came
home and described how they had searched with
Werendonk. They had each taken a different
direction through the bushes and kept calling to
one another ; a gamekeeper and a couple of labour-
ers had joined up with them, so that it was like a
battue. They had found no one, but they had
found footprints as far as the Vogelenzang road.
The next morning Werendonk stayed in bed later,
but in the afternoon he was attending to his business
again.
Then reports came in from even farther away,
from Hillegom, from Leimuiden and from the
Westeinder Lake. Each time Werendonk set off—
on the steam-tram, in a cab, or on a labourer's cart,
and often he had to walk for hours on end. He
went to Schoonhoven, too, because his brother-in-
law, from whom he hadn't heard for years, wrote to
say that he had received a post card from their
nephew asking for money.
On arriving home one evening in June, Frans
found his brother sitting at the table with his head