As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"
At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the next stage might set us right again.

As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost confidence. He looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of one long weary stage. I overheard him asking the drivers of coaches coming towards us what passengers they had passed. Their replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"
At last he told me that he had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It had disappeared in an unaccountable manner. But I was not to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the next stage might set us right again.
