Octave kept silent. Soon again the sound of distant neighing broke upon the stillness of the forest.
"No doubt any longer. Despairing of finding her way, my daughter must have tied her palfrey to a tree!" exclaimed the Emperor, his heart bounding with hope. Calling out to Octave, he ordered: "Gallop! Gallop faster!" and himself increasing his own speed to the utmost cried out uninterruptedly: "Thetralde! Thetralde! Thetralde, my daughter!"
Amael, who followed Charles at a goodly distance, keeping himself well in the shadow, also fell into a gallop the moment he noticed the torchlight that guided him suddenly move with increased swiftness into the darkness. The Emperor and Octave were close upon the spot where, before entering the woodcutter's hut, Vortigern and Thetralde had tied their mounts. The glimmer of the torch fell upon and lighted the white body of Thetralde's palfrey, throwing into the shade Vortigern's horse that was tied a few steps further away. The Emperor recognized his daughter's favorite mount, and cried out:
"Thetralde's palfrey!" and immediately thereupon perceiving the hut itself by the light of the torch borne by Octave, he added: "Oh, King of the Heavens! Thanks be to you!" The Emperor quickly dismounted and walking precipitately towards the hut which lay about twenty paces from the path, he called back to Octave: "Walk faster! My daughter is there. Precede me!"
Gifted with an eye even more piercing than Charles', Octave had recognized with a shudder the horse of Vortigern close to Thetralde's palfrey. Foreseeing the outburst of fury that the Emperor was about to fall into at the spectacle that Octave surmised awaited his aged eyes, the Roman resorted to an extreme measure. Affecting to stumble, he dropped the torch in the hope of extinguishing it at his feet, as if by accident. But Charles quickly stooped down, as quickly raised it and rushed forward towards the entrance of the hut. Trembling with fear, the young Roman followed closely behind the Emperor. Charles suddenly stood still as if petrified at the threshold of the hut, whose interior was now brilliantly lighted by the torch in the Emperor's hand. Having also dismounted, Amael was enabled, without his steps being heard by Charles, to draw nearer, and stood close to him at the very moment that, struck with stupor, the Emperor of the Franks stopped, motionless.
Profoundly asleep, and stretched out upon the floor with his unsheathed sword beside him, Vortigern barred the entrance to the hut. In order to enter it, an intruder would have been compelled to walk over his body that lay across the threshold. In the depth of the retreat, stretched on a bed of moss and carefully wrapped in the lad's tunic, Thetralde enjoyed a slumber as profound as her guardian at the entrance. The girl's head and face, charming in their candor, rested on one of her arms that lay folded beneath. So deep was the sleep of the two, that neither the young girl nor Vortigern was at first awakened by the glare of the torch.
Thick drops of perspiration rolled down from the forehead of the Emperor of the Franks. The stupor that first seized him at finding his daughter in a solitary hut in the company of the young Breton, was soon followed by an expression of undefinable agony. Presently the cruel doubts concerning the chastity of his youngest daughter made room for hope when he noticed the serenity of the slumber of the two children. The Emperor gathered additional comfort from the precaution that Vortigern had taken in laying himself athwart the entrance, obedient, no doubt, to a thought of respectful and chivalrous solicitude.
Thetralde was the first to open her eyes. The glare of the torch fell upon her face. She half raised her head; still half asleep, carried her hand to her eyes, and sat up. In a second, seeing her father before her, she uttered a cry of such sincere joy, her charming features expressed a happiness so utterly free from all embarrassment, that, bounding to her father's neck, she was pressed by Charles to his heart with delirious rapture:
"Oh!" the Emperor exclaimed, "I fear naught, her forehead is free from shame."
The words of the enraptured father reached the ears of Amael, who had remained motionless behind the Emperor, whose life was soon in no slight danger, seeing that, in her first and spontaneous outburst of joy to fall on her father's neck, Thetralde had struck Vortigern with her feet as she bounded forward. The young Breton, thus awakened with a start, his eyes dazzled by the glare of the torch, and his mind still clouded with sleep, grasped his sword and jumped up. At the sight of the two men at the entrance of the hut, one of them tightly holding Thetralde in his arms, the lad imagined that violence was being attempted upon her. He seized Charles by the throat with one hand and, raising his sword in the other, cried: "I will kill you!" Immediately, however, recognizing the father of Thetralde, Vortigern dropped his weapon, rubbed his eyes, and exclaimed: