Tenderly folded to his bosom, he held his infant with both his arms; and, swaying backwards and forwards, while his eyes wandered wildly over the waters, he seemed endeavouring to rock it to sleep. A little further up, his horse, his beautiful grey, of which he had been so fond, cropped the scanty herbage, with the bridle cast upon his neck; and hearing the approach of strangers even before his master, he raised high his proud head, and gazed eagerly around. "How does he feed the child?" demanded Langford, in a whisper. "With berries, and anything he can get," replied the boy; "he never lets it be out of his arms but to crawl round him for a few moments on the turf." "This is very terrible, indeed," said Langford; "but he sits there on such a fearful point of the rock that you had better go forward yourself, in the first instance, and tell him that I am here. The least thing might make him plunge over." "It would not surprise me at all," replied the boy, "for where he goes I am sure I would not go, and yet I can climb as well as any one." Langford then withdrew for a few yards, and the boy again uttered his low whistle, which was immediately answered. After pausing for a moment or two to give him time to reach his master, Langford again advanced, and saw the boy in eager conversation with Franklin Gray, whose eyes were now bent upon the spot where he stood. Satisfied that he was prepared for his coming, Langford descended with difficulty the precipitous path which led to the shelf of rock on which he stood; and Franklin Gray himself took a step or two back from the edge, and came forward to meet him. Holding the child still to his bosom with one arm, he at first held out the other to his old companion; but the next moment, as they came near, he drew it suddenly back, gazing upon him with his bright flashing eyes, and exclaiming, "No, no! This hand killed your father and your brother, and you must pursue me to the death!" "No, Franklin," replied Langford, in a calm and quiet tone; "I pursue you not with any evil intent towards you. What you say is true; that hand did slay my brother, and aided, perhaps, in taking my father's life; but that hand too aided and supported my mother; and my father, not many days before his death, made me promise that I would not seek for vengeance upon you. He said that he had wronged you in early years, and that it was fitting your own hand should punish him." "He did--he did wrong me!" cried Franklin Gray. "To him I owe all that is evil in my nature. He had me kidnapped when I was a boy, and would have fain followed the sweet lady he had deserted. He had me kidnapped, and carried me away into the south, and made me familiar with blood; and when I fled from him, he pursued me as if I had been his slave; but I escaped. And now, Henry, tell me what you seek with me! If you come not for vengeance, what is it you come for?"