By this time the heavy slab had again descended, and around it were gathered the eager fellows, who received their young master’s brother with open arms and subdued shouts of triumph and joy.  But he, though he smiled his thanks, looked round him with eyes dilated by the remembrance of some former scene there, and Gaston set his teeth hard, and shook back his head with a gesture that boded little good for the Sieur de Navailles upon a future day.

“Come men; we may not tarry!” he said.  “No man knows what fancy may enter into the head of the master of this place.  Turn the wheel again; send up the slab to its right place.  Let them have no clue to trace the flight of their victim.  Leave everything as we found it, and follow me without delay.”

He was all anxiety now to get his brother from the shadow of this hideous place.  The whiteness of Raymond’s face, the hollowness of his eyes, the lines of suffering traced upon his brow in a few short days, all told a tale only too easily read.

The rough fellows treated him tenderly as they might have treated a little child.  They felt that he had been through some ordeal from which they themselves would have shrunk with a terror they would have been ashamed to admit; and that despite the youth’s fragile frame and ethereal face that looked little like that of a mailed warrior, a hero’s heart beat in his breast, and he had the spirit to do and to dare what they themselves might have quailed from and fled before.

The transit through the narrow tunnel presented no real difficulty, and soon the sullen waters of the moat were troubled by the silent passage of seven instead of six swimmers.  The shock of the cold plunge revived Raymond; and the sense of space above him, the star-spangled sky overhead, the free sweet air around him, even the unfettered use of his weakened limbs, as he swam with his brother’s strong supporting arm about him, acted upon him like a tonic.  He hardly knew whether or not it was a dream; whether he were in the body or out of the body; whether he should awake to find himself in his gloomy cell, or under the cruel hands of his foes in that dread chamber he had visited once before.

He knew not, and at that moment he cared not.  Gaston’s arm was about him, Gaston’s voice was in his ear.  Whatever came upon him later could not destroy the bliss of the present moment.

A score of eager hands were outstretched to lift the light frame from Gaston’s arm as the brothers drew to the edge of the moat.  It was no time to speak, no time to ask or answer questions.  At any moment some unguarded movement or some crashing of the boughs underfoot might awaken the suspicions of those within the walls.  It was enough that the secret expedition had been crowned with success —­ that the captive was now released and in their own hands.