University of Virginia Library

IV.

AND then the shepherds of Los Alamos looked with mouths agape to see that The Mule stood still, and the knuckles of the hand that grasped his staff were strained and white. The voice of Gabriel wavered on amid the bleating of the sheep:

"If you are surely of Bourdonne you will earn an old man's blessing; and say to him that his mother is dead, and his father has come to find him. Say to my son, 'Jean Baptiste, your father loves you.'" The old man stooped a little, that he might meet The Mule eye to eye.

"Jean Baptiste," he said again, and then his staff shook in his hands, though there was no wind, and his voice shook, too, with a sudden note of hope and doubt and wistful inquiry. "Jean Baptiste," he cried, "your father loves you! Jean Baptiste—"

Jean Baptiste, called The Mule, dropped his staff and wept with his face between his hands, and his whole strong frame shook with emotion, and his father fell on his neck and kissed him.

So Gabriel found his son.