To the numberless questions that were put to him he only waited to shout aloud, “We’re all safe!  They’ll tell ye all about it,” he added, pointing to his comrades, who were now close at hand; and then, dashing onward, made straight for home, with little Marston clinging to his waist like a monkey.

Charlie was fresh, and so was Crusoe, so you may be sure it was not long before they all drew up opposite the door of the widow’s cottage.  Before Dick could dismount, Marston had slipped off, and was already in the kitchen.

“Here’s Dick, mother!”

The boy was an orphan, and loved the widow so much that he had come at last to call her mother.

Before another word could be uttered, Dick Varley was in the room.  Marston immediately stepped out and softly shut the door.  Reader, we shall not open it!

Having shut the door, as we have said, Marston ran down to the edge of the lake and yelled with delight—­usually terminating each paroxysm with the Indian war-whoop, with which he was well acquainted.  Then he danced, and then he sat down on a rock, and became suddenly aware that there were other hearts there, close beside him, as glad as his own.  Another mother of the Mustang Valley was rejoicing over a long-lost son.

Crusoe and his mother Fan were scampering round each other in a manner that evinced powerfully the strength of their mutual affection.

Talk of holding converse!  Every hair on Crusoe’s body, every motion of his limbs, was eloquent with silent language.  He gazed into his mother’s mild eyes as if he would read her inmost soul (supposing that she had one).  He turned his head to every possible angle, and cocked his ears to every conceivable elevation, and rubbed his nose against Fan’s, and barked softly, in every imaginable degree of modulation, and varied these proceedings by bounding away at full speed over the rocks of the beach, and in among the bushes and out again, but always circling round and round Fan, and keeping her in view!

It was a sight worth seeing, and young Marston sat down on a rock, deliberately and enthusiastically, to gloat over it.  But perhaps the most remarkable part of it has not yet been referred to.  There was yet another heart there that was glad—­exceeding glad that day.  It was a little one too, but it was big for the body that held it.  Grumps was there, and all that Grumps did was to sit on his haunches and stare at Fan and Crusoe, and wag his tail as well as he could in so awkward a position!  Grumps was evidently bewildered with delight, and had lost nearly all power to express it.  Crusoe’s conduct towards him, too, was not calculated to clear his faculties.  Every time he chanced to pass near Grumps in his elephantine gambols, he gave him a passing touch with his nose, which always knocked him head over heels; whereat Grumps invariably got up quickly and wagged his tail with additional energy.  Before the feelings of those canine friends were calmed, they were all three ruffled into a state of comparative exhaustion.