“In God’s hand, dear Eva,” said Julian, as he bade her good-night. “Go to sleep, and no doubt they will be here safe before you awake.”
“I shall not sleep, Julian,” she whispered; “I shall go and pray for their safety. Dear, dear Eddy and Violet.”
Cyril lingered in the room.
“Do let me stay up with you, Julian. I couldn’t sleep—indeed, I couldn’t; and I might be of some use when morning comes, and when you go to look for them. Do let me stay, Julian.”
Julian could not resist his brother’s wish, though Mr Kennedy thought it best that the boy should go to bed.
So they compromised matters by getting him to lie down on the sofa, while they sat up, and stared out of the windows silently into the rain. How wearily the time goes by when you dread a danger which no action can avert.
Meanwhile the objects of their anxiety had hurried up to the light, and found that it came from the ragged windows of an old tumble-down tenement, built of pine-boards which the sun had dried and charred, until they looked black and stained and forbidding. Going up the rotten wooden steps to the door, and looking through the broken windows, Kennedy saw two men seated, smoking, with a flaring tallow candle between them.
“Must we go in there?” asked Violet; and Kennedy observed how her arm and the tones of her voice were trembling with agitation.
“Isn’t it better than staying out in this dreadful storm?” said Kennedy. “The Swiss are an honest people, and I daresay these are herdsmen who will gladly give us food and shelter.”
Their voices had roused the inmates of the châlet, and both the men jumped up from their seats, while a large and fierce mastiff also shook himself from sleep, and gave a low deep growl.