He had not been long seated before he got up once more, and, approaching with caution, stood over Tiburcio. For several minutes he remained in this attitude, attentively examining the features of the young man: he then returned to his seat by the stump.
“Just about his age, if he is still living,” muttered he to himself. “But what chance have I to recognise in a grown man the features of an infant scarce four years old?”
A smile of disdain played for an instant on his lips, as if he were chiding himself for the silliness of his conjectures.
“And yet,” he continued, his countenance changing its expression, “I have seen and taken part in too many strange events—I have been too long face to face with Nature—to doubt the power of Providence. Why should I consider this a miracle? It was not one when I chanced upon the boat adrift that carried that poor infant and its murdered mother! No, it was the hand of God. Why might not the same hand restore him to me in the midst of the desert? The ways of Providence are inscrutable.”
As if this reflection had given birth to new hopes, the Canadian again rose to his feet, and approaching, stooped once more over the prostrate form of Tiburcio.
“How often,” said he, “have I thus gazed on my little Fabian as he slept! Well, whoever you are, young man,” continued he, “you have not come to my fire without finding a friend. May God do for my poor Fabian what I am disposed to do for you!”
Saying this, he once again returned to his seat, and remained for a long time reflecting upon incidents that had transpired twenty years before in the Bay of Biscay.
It should here be stated that up to this hour Bois-Rose and Pepé had not the slightest suspicion that they had ever met, before their chance encounter upon the prairies of America. In reality they had never met—farther than that they had been within musket-range of each other. But up to this hour Pepé knew not that his trapping comrade was the gigantic smuggler he had fired at from the beach of Ensenada; and Bois-Rose was equally ignorant that Pepé was the coast-guard whose “obstinacy and clumsiness” he had spoken of to his lieutenant.
The cause of this mutual ignorance of each other’s past was that neither of them had ever mentioned the word Elanchovi in the hearing of the other. The Canadian had never thought of communicating the incidents of that night to his prairie comrade; and Pepé, on his side, would have given much to have blotted them altogether from the pages of his memory.
The night became more chilly as the hours passed on, and a damp dew now fell upon the grass and the foliage of the trees. It did not wake the sleepers, however, both of whom required a long rest.