'Yes; yes; I will follow you—my good guide—my noble guide! If all I have can recompense you, it is yours. But it cannot.'
'That my master gives me his confidence still is all I ask,' said Bâl Narîn.
'My confidence! I am bound to you for ever and ever. From this day I look upon you as the nearest and dearest of my friends. But how, in the name of heaven, could you have found them in this thicket?'
'That is a long story. Some day I will tell my master. But truly those he loves are favoured by the gods, for the birds and the beasts that are their children have helped me in my search——'
And there he broke off, for they had leapt over the last nullah that separated them from the clearing and the hermit's hut; and the moon having risen and floating freely overhead, Tom saw, as Bâl Narîn had seen before him, the little enclosure of dried twigs and leaves; but within there was darkness, and no one was moving to and fro.
[CHAPTER XLI]
WHAT THE MORNING BROUGHT
How Tom lived through the next few moments he never knew. The next thing of which he was distinctly conscious was standing in front of the hut and looking within and seeing nothing but blackness. As he groped forward with arms extended blindly, Bâl Narîn, who had been busy kindling another torch, came up behind him, and the flashing light flamed suddenly upon a spectacle that made Tom's heart stand still, and brought a wild cry to his lips.
There were three figures in the small enclosure. On one side, rigid in death, lay the fearfully emaciated body of an old man. A couch of dried grass was his bier, and his limbs were covered with the long robe that he had worn in his lifetime. On the other side, the little heap of grass on which he lay pressed close against the opposite side of the hut, and as far as possible from that sight of fear, was a child with golden hair, whose tiny face, thin and pinched with suffering, bore upon its lips the tranquil smile of sleep, or her twin-sister death. This in the flashing of an instant Tom saw. But it was not this, for all its pitifulness, that brought the sick chill to his heart, and that wrung from his lips that tortured cry. For he saw something else. She was lying there—his love—his darling! On the damp floor, but close beside the couch, and with arms outspread, as if her last conscious effort had been spent in defending the child, she lay before him motionless. She did not stir when Bâl Narîn's light fell upon her. The cry of irrepressible anguish that had broken from Tom brought from her pale lips no answering note of recognition. It was as he had so often dreamed it would be. He had found her, indeed; but she was dead—dead—dead!