" replied Amael with a look of tenderness, "would you doubt
my heart in the future?"

"No, Amael," she answered naively, looking at the young man with an
expression of timidity and surprise. "I shall never doubt you."

"Mother, this sweet and brave girl saved your life; she is now a
fugitive, forever separated from her family. If she should consent to
give me her hand, would you accept her as a daughter?"

"Oh, with joy! With thankfulness!" said Rosen-Aer. "But would you
consent to the union, Septimine?"

Blushing with surprise, with happiness and confusion, the girl threw
herself on the neck of Amael's mother, and holding her face on the
matron's breast, murmured:

"I loved him since the day he showed himself so generous toward me at
the convent of St. Saturnine. Did he not there protect me?"

"Oh, Rosen-Aer!" now exclaimed the old man who had stood near wrapped in
thought, "the gods have blessed my old age, seeing they reserved such a
day for me." And after a few seconds of silent emotion, shared in by the
young apprentices, the old man proceeded, saying: "My friends, if you
will take my advice, let us resume our march. We shall have to walk
briskly in order to arrive to-morrow evening at the frontier of
Armorica."

"Mother," said Amael, "lean upon me; you will not now refuse the support
of my arm?"

"No, oh, no! my child!" answered the matron with tenderness, and brimful
of happiness, taking her son's arm.

"And you, good father," said Septimine to the old goldsmith, "you lean
on me."

The fugitives resumed their march. After having traveled without
accident until night and the following day, they arrived at moon-rise
not far from the first spurs of the wild and high mountains that serve
both as boundary and as ramparts to Armorica. The sight of his native
soil awoke in Bonaik the recollections of his boyhood days as if by
enchantment. Having before now crossed the frontiers with his father in
order to attend the Breton fairs, he remembered that four druid stones
of colossal size rose not far from a path that was cut between the
rocks, and that was so closely hemmed in, that it allowed only one
person to march abreast. The fugitives entered the path one after the
other and began climbing the steep ascent. Amael marched first.
Presently they arrived at a little clearing or platform, surrounded by
precipices and beetled over by huge rocks.

Suddenly the fugitives heard from a far distance above their head