“A pretty night’s work this,” he said, when he came into the room and saw his sister lying there.

At this moment she opened her eyes, and he went close to her and raised her in his arms.  With an expression of deep thankfulness, Marguerite’s first words were to send that murderer, Jacques Gaultier, away out of her sight.  Hirzel ordered him to leave the room, with more fierceness in his tone than anyone had heard there before.

“Oh!  Hirzel, what shall I do without Charlie?  Stay with me, only you, and I will tell you all.”

Hearing this her Father left the room, and Hirzel bent down and whispered to her—–­

“Charlie is alive and well.  He told me to tell you this himself.”

“Oh!  Hirzel, you are deceiving me.  How could he be alive after such a dreadful fall?  It was terrible.”

Here Marguerite’s fortitude gave way, and she indulged in a flood of tears, while Hirzel looked at her with the masculine helplessness usual on such occasions, and indeed it seemed to cost the fine tender-hearted fellow an effort to keep from joining in them too.  At last he said, “Well Marguerite, if you don’t stop, I’ll go off, and tell Charlie you only cried after you heard he was alive and well.”

“Ah!  Hirzel, is that not the way with our sex.  Sometimes, to cry over the best and happiest times while the worst is bravely borne?”

Hirzel then told Marguerite how he had met Charlie just outside at the foot of the lane, considerably bruised and knocked about, though without any internal injuries.  How he escaped was nothing short of a miracle, one of those things which occasionally happen, perhaps, to show what can be done when there is the will to do it.

There was an iron loop which projected about a foot from the walls, this Charlie made a spring at after the manner of a gymnast; he caught it, and although it came away in his grasp, yet it broke his fall, and what was of more importance, changed the direction of his course to the brickwork alongside the wheel, instead of the water under it.  Once on the brickwork he jumped down into the garden, and went out into the lane, where he met Hirzel.

Charlie did not for a moment suspect that there was anything but pure accident in what had happened, and as he met Hirzel just at that moment he judged it wisest not to return near the house in case he should get Marguerite into trouble; but after telling Hirzel to assure his sister that he was safe, he set off to the fortress, little thinking he was supposed to be lying dead at the foot of the Moulin Huet cliffs, carried there by the mill stream.