We stood around him in dread silence and expectancy, a group for a picture.  St. Aubyn in the midst, with white quivering face and clasped hands, the two Raouls on either side, listening intently, the dogs motionless and eager, their ears erect, their hair bristling round their stretched throats.  You might have heard a pin drop on the rock at our feet, as we stood and waited after that cry.  A minute passed thus, and then there was heard from below, at a great depth, a faint uncertain sound.  One word only—­uttered in the voice of a child,—­tremulous, and intensely earnest:  “Father!”

St Aubyn fell on his knees.  “My God! my God!” he cried, sobbing; “it is my boy!  He is alive, and can hear and speak!”

With feverish haste we descended the crag, and speedily found ourselves on a green sward, sheltered on three sides by high walls of cliff, and bounded on the fourth, southward, by a rushing stream some thirty feet from shore to shore.  Beyond the stream was a wide expanse of pasture stretching down into the Arblen valley.

Again St. Aubyn shouted, and again the childlike cry replied, guiding us to a narrow gorge or fissure in the cliff almost hidden under exuberant foliage.  This passage brought us to a turfy knoll, upon which opened a deep recess in the mountain rock; a picturesque cavern, carpeted with moss, and showing, from some ancient, half obliterated carvings which here and there adorned its walls, that it had once served as a crypt or chapel, possibly in some time of ecclesiastical persecution.  At the mouth of this cave, with startled eyes and pallid parted lips, stood a fair-haired lad, wrapped in the mantle described by the elder Raoul.  One instant only he stood there; the next he darted forward, and fell with weeping and inarticulate cries into his father’s embrace.

We paused, and waited aloof in silence, respecting the supreme joy and emotion of a greeting so sacred as this.  The dogs only, bursting into the cave, leapt and gambolled about, venting their satisfaction in sonorous barks and turbulent demonstrations of delight.  But for them, as they seemed well to know, this marvellous discovery would have never been achieved, and the drama which now ended with so great happiness, might have terminated in a lifelong tragedy.

Therefore we were not surprised to see St. Aubyn, after the first transport of the meeting, turn to the dogs, and clasping each huge rough head in turn, kiss it fervently and with grateful tears.

It was their only guerdon for that day’s priceless service:  the dumb beasts that love us do not work for gold!

And now came the history of the three long months which had elapsed since the occurrence of the disaster which separated my friend from his little son.