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Then went Onund to the woods, but the sons of Ondott took a boat of Ingiald's, their foster-father's, and rowed away therein, and lay hid a little way off the homestead. Earl Audun came to the feast, even as had been settled afore, and there "missed friend from stead."
"Come with me," he commanded, placing his hand on the shoulder of the child, who unresistingly suffered himself to be pushed along toward his foster-father's room. Frances Allan broke into wild sobbing and placed her fingers against her ears that she might not hear the screams of her pet. But there were no screams.
The wind blew keenly from the snow before them, and by the time they reached a miserable village, high up on the slopes of the pass, every one save the two children was chilled to the bone; but they, well happed in all the coverings the fugitives could compass, were warm; Akbar, in Foster-father's arms, with Down, the cat, cuddled up beside him, and acting as a hot bottle!
The days, therefore, did not pass so uncomfortably, though pressing anxiety sat on Foster-father's honest face, and every time Roy returned from a climb up to outer air he would ask him if he had seen anything. "Nothing," Roy would reply, "and the snow wastes but little, we are so high up." At last one night, after the children were asleep, Foster-father summoned a council of war.
A being with a wonderfully perfect face, clothed in heterogeneous and many-coloured garments, and educated on the amazing fictions with which her foster-father's memory seems to be stored, would be worth waiting to see." But he had not long to wait.
So as the days passed on Foster-father's vigilance though he knew that cruel brother Kumran's agents were on the lookout for any opportunity of kidnapping the Heir-to-Empire slackened somewhat, especially when the afternoons drew in, the fire in the big hall was made up, the quilts put down and Baby Akbar, surrounded by his admiring circle, listened to Roy's stories or tumbled about with his playmates, Tumbu, the dog, and Down, the cat.
Thus Foster-father's heart sank within him, when in the distance, down the rocky ravine through which the Kâbul River dashes, and along which the caravan road took its high-perched way, he saw the battlemented wall of the city, cresting the low hills on which the town was built.
So the little prince was carefully watched and guarded, rather to Foster-father's and Old Faithful's relief. Indeed, as time went on they almost forgot to watch themselves, being accustomed to see the sentry walking up and down before the entry to the narrow stairs that led up to the three rooms in the old bastion which were given them as lodgings.
Its violence was so great as to almost stun him until at length, without being more than half conscious of the significance of his own words he had asked if it would not be better for him to go away and earn his own living; and then came his foster-father's startlingly ready consent, with the warning that if he did go he must look for no further aid from him.
Little Rosalie was a week older than when she came, but it was five weeks before anything happened to disturb the even tenor of the foster-father's way. He had worked diligently in the effort to discover the parents of the baby, but without result.
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