Tomaso, tossing his hair back from his face, with parted lips, stepped close, followed by Vittore.
"Father! Thou dost not know me!"
"Son! Tomaso!" cried the traveler. He seized him by the shoulders with trembling hands, and scanned eagerly his face.
"Tomaso!" and his voice was shrill with feeling, "Tomaso at last!"
They had not met for many months and years—two at least; the father, absent at a distant court, serving where chance had led him, for fame and fortune; the son, growing from boyhood into man in distant Florence.
Since Verona fell, Tomaso had mourned his father as dead, and he, in his turn, had wandered far, searching for the pair who had started out to find him.
With stifled sobs of joy, Tomaso clung about his father's neck, and was clasped to him in frenzied pleasure.
"They said thou wert dead, father!" broke out the youth at last. "I never thought to see thy face again."
"I thought the same of thee, my son," returned Ligozzi tenderly. "I have been searching for traces of thee long and wearily. I thought thou must have perished on thy long journey, having found out Verona had fallen. But is this Vittore?" He drew to him paternally the boy who, so far, had watched the scene with wide-eyed curiosity.