as heard
pouring through the opening and falling into the cavern. Pale as death,
Septimine could not utter a word. In the frenzy of her despair,
Rosen-Aer sought to break the stout iron bars of the window, while she
sobbed aloud: "To know that he is there ... in agony ... dying ... and
we unable to save him!"

"Have hope!" cried the old man with tears in his eyes at the sight of
the mother's anguish; "hope!... I have been watching the moss-covered
stone at the corner of the air-hole. The water does not rise to it....
It has stopped rising.... See for yourselves!"

Septimine and Rosen-Aer dried their tears and looked at the stone that
Bonaik pointed out. In fact it was not submerged. Presently even the
noise of the water flowing down through the air-hole sounded with less
distinctness, and finally ceased altogether. The flood seemed checked.

"He is saved!" cried Septimine. "Thank God, the young chief will not
drown!"

"Saved!" stammered Rosen-Aer in a heart-rending tone of doubt. "And if
enough water has poured into the cavern to drown him.... Oh! If he were
still alive he would have answered my voice.... No, no! He is dying! He
is dead!"

"Master Bonaik, some one knocks," an apprentice said. "What shall I do?
Open?"

"Return to your hiding place," the old man said to Rosen-Aer, and as she
did not seem to hear, he added: "Are you determined to perish and have
us all perish with you, we who are ready to sacrifice ourselves for you
and your son?" Rosen-Aer left the window and returned to the vault,
while the old man walked to the door and inquired: "Who is there?"

"I," answered from the outside the voice of the apprentice who had gone
out with Ricarik; "I, Justin, I have executed your commissions, Father
Bonaik."

"Come in, quick," said the goldsmith to the lad who carried an empty
barrel on his shoulders and had in his hand a basket of provisions, the
wine pouch, and a large roll of rope and cord. Re-bolting the door, the
old man took the wine pouch out of the basket and going to the vault
where Rosen-Aer was hiding said to her: "Take a little wine to comfort
you."

But Amael's mother pushed the pouch aside, crying in despair: "My son!
My son! What has become of my son Amael?"

"Justin," the old man said to the apprentice, "give me the stones I told
you to pick up."

"Here, Master Bonaik, are they. I filled my pockets with them."

The old man picked out a small stone and went to the window, saying: "If