CONCLUSION.
THE NIGHT AND THE SEA.
CHAPTER I.
A WATCH-DOG MAY BE A GUARDIAN ANGEL.
Gwynplaine uttered a cry.
"Is that you, wolf?"
Homo wagged his tail. His eyes sparkled in the darkness. He was looking earnestly at Gwynplaine.
Then he began to lick his hands again. For a moment Gwynplaine was like a drunken man, so great is the shock of Hope's mighty return.
Homo! What an apparition! During the last forty-eight hours he had exhausted what might be termed every variety of the thunder-bolt. But one was left to strike him—the thunderbolt of joy. And it had just fallen upon him. Certainty, or at least the light which leads to it, regained; the sudden intervention of some mysterious clemency possessed, perhaps, by destiny; life saying, "Behold me!" in the darkest recess of the grave; the very moment in which all expectation has ceased bringing back health and deliverance; a place of safety discovered at the most critical instant in the midst of crumbling ruins—Homo was all this to Gwynplaine. The wolf appeared to him in a halo of light.