It was all a mystery to him.

But he had greater faith in the wise woman than he altogether felt prepared to admit, and as he sought his couch that night he kept saying over and over to himself the magic words he had heard.
"'Three times three--three times three!' What can that signify?
In the forest perchance I shall read the riddle aright.

Or perchance the gipsy queen, the dark-eyed Joanna, will aid me in the search.
If I could but trust her, she might see things that I cannot in these lines.

Would that the winter were past; would that the summer were about to come! The perils of the forest are to be less to me than the perils of the city.

I wonder what perils menace me here.
Beneath my father's roof I oft went in peril of my life; but here--why, here I feel safer than ever in my life before!".