The effort to look and to speak had overpowered the weary child, and he sank back again into unconsciousness.
Then began the journey home. Not to the old cottage; that was Ralph's home no longer, but to the home of wealth and beauty now, to the mansion yonder in the city where the mother was waiting for her boy.
Aye! the mother was waiting for her boy.
They had sent a messenger on horseback shortly after midnight to tell her that the lad's tracks had been found in the old mine, that all the men at hand had started in there to make the search more thorough, that by daylight the child would be in her arms, that possibly, oh! by the merest possibility, he might still be living.
So through the long hours she had waited, had waited and watched, listening for a footfall in the street, for a step on the porch, for a sound at her door; yet no one came. The darkness that lay upon the earth seemed, also, to lie heavily on her spirit.
But now, at last, with the gray light that told of coming day, there crept into her heart a hope, a confidence, a serenity of faith that set it quite at rest.
She drew back the curtains and threw open the windows to let in the morning air.
The sky above the eastern hilltops was aglow with crimson; in the zenith it was like the color of the sweet pale rose.
She felt and knew that her boy was living and that very soon he would be with her. Doubt had disappeared wholly from her mind. She threw open the great hall doors that he might have a gracious and a fitting welcome to his home.
She went up once more to the room in which he was to lie until health should return to him, to see that it was ready to receive him.