Her call brought every one from the parlour to see the dog, who was springing back and forth with eager barks that asked, as plainly as words, for some one to follow him.

“Oh, let me go with you! Please, Papa Jack,” begged Lloyd.

He shook his head decidedly.  “No, it is too late and dark, and no telling how far we shall have to climb.  You have already done your part, my dear, in sending the dog.  If the Major is really in need of help, he will have you to thank for his rescue.”

The landlord called for lanterns.  Several of the guests seized their hats and alpenstocks, and in a few minutes the little relief party was hurrying along the street after their trusty guide, with Mr. Sherman in the lead.  He had caught up a hammock as he started.  “We may need some kind of a stretcher,” he said, slinging it over his shoulder.

They trudged on in silence, wondering what they would find at the end of their journey.  The mountain path was strewn with limbs broken off by the storm.  Although the moon came up presently and added its faint light to the yellow rays of the lanterns, they had to pick their steps slowly, often stumbling.

Hero, bounding on ahead, paused to look back now and then, with impatient barks.  They had climbed more than an hour, when he suddenly shot ahead into the darkest part of the woods and gave voice so loudly that they knew that they had reached the end of their search, and pushed forward anxiously.

The moonlight could not reach this spot among the trees, so densely shaded, but the lanterns showed them the old man a short distance from the path.  He was pinned to the wet earth by a limb that had fallen partly across him.  Fortunately, the storm had been unable to twist it entirely from the tree.  Only the outer end of the limb had struck him, but the tangle of leafy boughs above him was too thick to creep through.  His clothes were drenched, and on the ground beside him, beaten flat by the storm, lay the bunch of Alpine roses he had climbed so far to find.

He was conscious when the men reached him.  The brandy in the flask had revived him and as they drew him out from under the branches and stretched the hammock over some poles for a litter, he told them what had happened.  He had been some distance farther up the mountain, and had stopped at a peasant’s hut for some goat’s milk.  He rested there a long time, never noticing in the dense shade of the woods that a storm was gathering.

It came upon him suddenly.  His head was hurt, and his back.  He could not tell how badly.  He had lain so long on the wet ground that he was numb with cold, but thought he would be better when he was once more resting warm and dry at the inn.

He stretched out his hand to Hero and feebly patted him, a faint smile crossing his face.  “Thou best of friends,” he whispered.  “Thou—­” Then he stopped, closing his eyes with a groan.  They were lifting him on the stretcher, and the pain caused by the movement made him faint.