In a few minutes all were calm enough to enter upon explanations. Then it appeared that the strange boy was an Italian who had come to Trevethick with the English tutor who had charge of him. He knew so little of English that he had utterly failed to understand the warning Duke had tried to give to him.
"Luigio brought this trouble on himself through disobedience," said his tutor. "I distinctly told him that he was not to go into the water till I joined him. We only came into this neighbourhood last evening. When I saw this little beach I thought it looked a delightful place for a bathe; but I meant to make inquiries as to its safety before I allowed Luigio to go in."
[CHAPTER V.]
EXPLORING THE OLD HOUSE.
WHEN they reached home, Duke was put to bed, where he remained for the rest of the day. His mother would not let him talk of what had happened.
"Thank God that your life was spared, my boy," she said, "and then try to forget it all in sleep."
Duke did try to thank God as he lay still, feeling strangely awed.
"Mother," said Noel, as they sat at dinner together, "are you glad that Duke was so brave?"
"Oh, yes, I am glad," said Mrs. Dryden, though tears sprang to her eyes, "I want my boys to be brave. And yet I don't know how I should have felt if he had been drowned. It seems to me I could not have borne it."
"I told him to go, mother, so it would have been my fault if he had been drowned," Noel said gravely. "I felt dreadful when I saw him go under, yet I thought God would save him somehow, and He did."