as our kindred have done before us, and make ourselves honoured and
respected of all men. It may be that we shall then be lords of Saut once
more. But be that as it may, we shall be strong, rich, powerful -- as
our uncles are now. Then, if thou wilt so have it, we will think again
of Basildene; and if we win it back, it shall be thine, and thine alone.
Fight thou by my side whilst we are yet too young to bring to good any
private matter of our own. Then will I, together with thee, think again
of our boyhood's dream; and it may be that we shall yet live to be
called the Twin Brothers of Basildene!"

Raymond smiled at the sound of that name, as he had smiled at Gaston's
eager words before. Full of ardent longings and unbounded enthusiasm, as
were most well-born youths in those adventurous days, he was just a
little less confident than Gaston of the brilliant success that was to
attend upon their feats of arms. Still there was much of the fighting
instinct in the boy, and there was certainly no hope of regaining
Basildene in the present. So that he agreed willingly to his brother's
proposition, although he resolved before he left these parts to look
once with his own eyes upon the home that had sheltered his mother's
childhood and youth.

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, a