"Certainly," replied Jonathan, with the most perfect sangfroid, "I'll undertake to free you from the boy. That's part of the bargain."
"Is he alive!" vociferated Trenchard.
"To be sure," returned Wild; "he's not only alive, but likely for life, if we don't clip the thread."
Sir Rowland caught at a chair for support, and passed his hand across his brow, on which the damp had gathered thickly.
"The intelligence seems new to you. I thought I'd been sufficiently explicit," continued Jonathan. "Most persons would have guessed my meaning."
"Then it was not a dream!" ejaculated Sir Rowland in a hollow voice, and as if speaking to himself. "I did see them on the platform of the bridge—the child and his preserver! They were not struck by the fallen ruin, nor whelmed in the roaring flood,—or, if they were, they escaped as I escaped. God! I have cheated myself into a belief that the boy perished! And now my worst fears are realized—he lives!"
"As yet," returned Jonathan, with fearful emphasis.
"I cannot—dare not injure him," rejoined Trenchard, with a haggard look, and sinking, as if paralysed, into a chair.
Jonathan laughed scornfully.
"Leave him to me," he said. "He shan't trouble you further."