And then they plunged into the thickest of the forest, and could talk no more till they had reached the little clearing that lay around the woodman’s hut.  The old man was not far away, as they heard by the sound of a falling axe a little to the right of them.  Following this sound, they quickly came upon the object of their search —­ the grizzled old man, with the same look of unutterable woe stamped upon his face.

Gaston, who knew only one-half of the errand upon which they had come, produced the pieces of silver that the Rector and John had sent, with a message of thanks to the old woodman for his help in directing the Prince and his company to the robbers’ cave at such a favourable moment.  The old man appeared bewildered at first by the sight of the money and the words of thanks; but recollection came back by degrees, though he seemed as one who in constant brooding upon a single theme has come to lose all sense of other things, and scarce to observe the flight of time, or to know one day from another.

This strange, wild melancholy, which had struck John at once, now aroused in Raymond a sense of sympathetic interest.  He had come to try to seek the cause of the old man’s sorrow, and he did not mean to leave with his task unfulfilled.

Perhaps John could have found no fitter emissary than this Gascon lad, with his simple forest training, his quick sympathy and keen intelligence, and his thorough knowledge of the details of peasant life, which in all countries possess many features in common.

It was hard at first to get the old man to care to understand what was said, or to take the trouble to reply.  The habit of silence is one of the most difficult to break; but patience and perseverance generally win the day:  and when it dawned upon this strange old man that it was of himself and his own loss and grief that these youths had come to speak, a new look crossed his weatherbeaten face, and a strange gleam of mingled fury and despair shone in the depths of his hollow eyes.

“My sorrow!” he exclaimed, in a voice from which the dreary cadence had now given place to a clearer, firmer ring:  “is it of that you ask, young sirs?  Has it been told to you the cruel wrong that I have suffered?”

Then suddenly clinching his right hand and shaking it wildly above his head, he broke into vehement and almost unintelligible invective, railing with frenzied bitterness against some foe, speaking so rapidly, and with such strange inflections of voice, that it was but a few words that the brothers could distinguish out of the whole of the impassioned speech.  One of those words was “my son —­ my boy,” followed by the names of Sanghurst and Basildene.

It was these names that arrested the attention of the brothers, causing them to start and exchange quick glances.  Raymond waited till the old man had finished his railing, and then he asked gently: 

“Had you then a son?  Where is he now?”