It rose for about five hundred paces with an easy but winding slope.

Coming to an opening, Montbar stopped and gave, three times, the same owl's cry with which he had called Morgan.

A single hoot answered him; then a man slid down from the branches of a bushy oak.

It was the sentinel who guarded the entrance to the grotto, which was not more than thirty feet from the oak.

The position of the trees surrounding it made it almost impossible of detection.
The sentinel exchanged a few whispered words with Montbar, who seemed, by fulfilling the duties of leader, desirous of leaving Morgan entirely to his thoughts.