Twice more during that long journey I thought I had lost Fiam. Each time it was on account of that hole in his box through which he crawled out to ramble, and which he couldn’t always find on his way back.

One morning in a Chinese village, where I had passed the night, just as I was mounting my horse to ride out to the army I discovered that Fiam had disappeared.

I looked everywhere, especially among my postage stamps, but couldn’t find him.

In the afternoon as I lay under a tree in the stillness of a deserted field I thought I heard his little voice.

“Fiam! Fiam!” I called.

I could make out the response distinctly:

“Miferino! Miferino!”

As I was warm I had taken off my waistcoat to use [100] as a pillow as I lay stretched out. The voice came from that.

I fumbled around until I found him shut in between the lining and the cloth. I pulled him out and greeted him effusively.

“How did you ever get there?”

“I have a habit of going out at night.”

“A very bad one.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do? I don’t sleep. Last night I went out as usual. Your watch near my house made such an abominable noise, tic, tac! It was like a blacksmith’s forge. Never mind. I went out and took a trip over your clothes.”

“Over my clothes?”

“Exactly; you had thrown them on the floor, and they made a beautiful landscape.”

“A landscape?”

“Surely. All in a heap they looked like mountains and valleys, ravines, plains, precipices and grottoes—all kinds of things. It wa............