are growing
warmer."

With the aid of the apprentices, who were no less compassionate than
Septimine and the old man, Rosen-Aer was drawn sitting on a stool near
the forge. Little by little she felt the salutary effect of the
penetrating heat, she gradually recovered her senses, and finally awoke.
Gathering her thoughts, she stretched out her arms to Septimine and said
in a feeble voice: "Dear child, you saved me!"

Septimine threw herself around Rosen-Aer's neck, shedding glad tears,
and answered: "We have done what we could; we are only poor slaves."

"Oh! my child, I am a slave like yourselves, brought to this country
from the center of Languedoc. We spent the night on the road between the
two ponds of this monastery. The oxen had been unhitched from the carts.
We were caught in the inundation that began at daybreak----" But
Rosen-Aer suddenly broke off and rose to her feet. Her face was at first
expressive of stupor, but immediately a delirious joy seized her, and
precipitating herself towards the open window, she passed her arm
through the thick iron bars, crying: "My son! I see my son Amael
yonder!"

For a moment both Septimine and Bonaik believed the unhappy woman had
become demented, but when they approached the window the young girl
joined her hands and cried out: "The Frankish Chief, he in an
underground passage of the abbey?"

Rosen-Aer and Septimine saw on the other side of the moat Berthoald
holding himself up with both hands by the iron bars of the air-hole of
the cavern. He suddenly saw and as quickly recognized his mother, and,
delirious with joy, he cried in a thrilling voice that, despite the
distance, reached the workshop: "Mother!... My dear mother!"

"Septimine," Bonaik said anxiously to the girl, "do you know that young
man?"

"Oh, yes! He was as good to me as an angel from Heaven! I saw him at the
convent of St. Saturnine. It is to that warrior that Charles donated
this abbey."

"To him!" replied the old man, bewildered. "How, then, comes he in that
cavern?"

"Master Bonaik," one of the apprentices ran by saying, "I hear outside
the voice of the intendant Ricarik. He stopped under the vault to scold
some one. He will be here in a minute. He is coming on his morning
round, as is his habit. What is best to be done?"

"Good God!" cried the old man in terror. "He will find this woman here,
and will question her. She may betray herself and acknowledge that she
is the mother of that young