till at length he emerged from the subterranean gulf which had so long imprisoned him into the mountain cave wherein he bad ever since remained.  How long it had taken him to accomplish this passage he could not guess, but from the sun’s position it seemed to be about noon when he again beheld day.  He sat down, dazzled and fatigued, on the mossy floor of the grotto, and watched the mountain torrent eddying and sweeping furiously past in the gorge beneath his retreat.  After a while he slept, and awoke towards evening faint with hunger and bitterly regretting the affliction which prevented him from attracting help.

Suddenly, to his great amaze, a huge tawny head appeared above the rocky edge of the plateau, and in another moment a St. Bernard hound clambered up the steep bank and ran towards the cave.  He was dripping wet, and carried, strapped across his broad back, a double pannier, the contents of which proved on inspection to consist of three flasks of goat’s milk, and some half dozen rye loaves packed in a tin box.

The friendly expression and intelligent demeanour of his visitor invited little St. Aubyn’s confidence and reanimated his sinking heart.  Delighted at such evidence of human proximity, and eager for food, he drank of the goat’s milk and ate part of the bread, afterwards emptying his pockets of the few sous he possessed and enclosing them with the remaining loaves in the tin case, hoping that the sight of the coins would inform the dog’s owners of the incident.  The creature went as he came, plunging into the deepest and least boisterous part of the torrent, which he crossed by swimming, regained the opposite shore, and soon disappeared from view.

But next day, at about the same hour, the dog reappeared alone, again bringing milk and bread, of which again the lad partook, this time, however, having no sous to deposit in the basket.  And when, as on the previous day, his new friend rose to depart, Charlie St. Aubyn left the cave with him, clambered down the bank with difficulty, and essayed to cross the torrent ford.  But the depth and rapidity of the current dismayed him, and with sinking heart the child returned to his abode.  Every day the same thing happened, and at length the strange life became familiar to him, the trees, the birds, and the flowers became his friends, and the great hound a mysterious protector whom he regarded with reverent affection and trusted with entire confidence.  At night he dreamed of home, and constantly visited his father in visions, saying always the same words, “Father, I am alive and well.”

“And now,” whispered the child, nestling closer in St. Aubyn’s embrace, “the wonderful thing is that today, for the first and only time since I have been in this cave, my dog has not come to me!  It looks, does it not, as if in some strange and fairylike way he really knew what was happening, and had known it all along from the very beginning!  O father! can he be—­do you think—­can he be an Angel in disguise?  And, to be sure, I patted him, and thought he was only a dog!”