"Lost!... My son!" cried Rosen-Aër in despair, rushing to the window despite the old man's efforts to restrain her. "Oh, my son! To have seen you again only to lose you.... Amael, Amael!... Answer your mother!"
"The woman will betray us ... if she is heard outside!" said the fear-stricken old man, vainly endeavoring to drag Rosen-Aër from the window bars to which the distracted woman clung, hysterically calling out to her son. But Amael did not reappear. The flood had gained the opening of the air-hole, and despite the width of the moat that separated the two buildings, the muffled sound of the water was 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-Aër 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-Aër 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-Aër 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-Aër, 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-Aër 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-Aër was hiding said to her: "Take a little wine to comfort you."