"Language cannot convey an idea of the accumulating horrors of my situation. Struggling with suffocation, with a feeling more awful than terror, and with despair, the agony of darkness must be experienced to be imagined.
"Still I moved on; and suddenly, when ready to sink, wearied, fainting, hopeless, the glorious light of day streamed upon my sight. I bounded forward with a wild shout; but the magnificent sun, bursting from the eastern heavens, blinded my unaccustomed gaze.
"I again found that I was free: but my wife—my child—where were they? It was many years before I learned that the nephew of the inquisitor, who had sought her hand, having died, she regained her liberty, and fled with our infant son to Scotland, to seek the home of her lost husband. Since then I have never heard of them again."
When the major had thus concluded his narrative,
"Here," said Christopher, "are two rings which were taken from the fingers of my mother—both bear inscriptions."
The old officer gazed upon them.
"They were hers—my Maria's!" he exclaimed; "I myself placed them upon her fingers. Son of my Maria, thou art mine!"
The major purchased a commission for his long-lost son; and when peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, they returned to Northumberland together, where Christopher gave his sword as a memorial to his foster-father, Peter Thornton, and his hand to Jessie Wilkinson.